Recovering (12 page)

 
No dreams. Just an earthquake. I come
to slowly, the world swirling around me and a heavy grip on my shoulder.

 “I think
something’s wrong with him,” a voice says over me. My body shakes. For a moment
I think it’s another seizure. I got to ride that delightful rollercoaster twice
the first week I was back at home after the coma. I’ve been up against some
scary shit in my day, but nothing like losing control of your body, blacking
out, and coming to with piss soaked jeans and Maya staring over me, her eyes
the size of dinner plates.

 Then I
realize the seizure is actually Bird Brain shaking me.

 “Stop,
stop,” I groan, trying to collect my thoughts. They’ve wandered quite afield.
“I’m alive.”
Probably.

 Bird Brain
gives me a look like he isn’t quite sure. If cells had voices, every single one
in my body would be begging me to close my eyes and pull the covers over my
head. But Maya. Pit of vipers.

Batman
doesn’t hit the snooze button.

I sit up with
effort. One hand goes up to smooth my hair, but the bristles remind me that I
don’t have much left. I look around, and realize that Finch isn’t in the bed
with me. I probably creeped her out for life with that unannounced cuddle. Might’ve
turned her off of men entirely.

 “Text come
through?” I say, trying to project an air of smooth confidence and not trip on
the sheets at the same time. The concerned expression on Bird Brain’s face tells
me that he’s not buying what I’m selling. Chainy leans against the doorframe,
arms folded across his chest.
Thanks for not stabbing me through the eye
with a butter knife while I slept,
I think to him as I walk past.

 “Here,” Bird
Brain hands over my phone as we enter into the main room. Sir Hopsalot digs into
his tub of hay in the corner. I don’t even remember setting it up and wonder if
one of my new teammates did me a solid.  

 The phone
contains a single text.
Ready.

“Nice.” I
hold out my fist to Bear as I pass him. Confusion clouds his face, but then his
knuckles meet mine. He smiles a little, and I grin back at him.

 “Come along
Pond, we have work to do,” I tell him. It’s a guess, but his eyes light up, and
I know why I instantly clicked with him. We
Doctor Who
crazies have to
stick together. I sit behind the desk and confirm with LuvDragon that I’m ready
on my end. She gives me the green light. She’s hacked the phone company. When I
make an outgoing call, she’ll be able to follow the signal relay and give me a
location on the other end.

 I feel the eyes
from the Totem members boring into me like three sets of diamond tipped drills.
Got to impress. I almost smile as I scroll through the phone’s call log. I’m
looking for someone the angel calls often, someone who has the highest chance
of being an angel in his group. If he or she is at their home base when I call,
then we’ll be golden…if I can keep the call going long enough. A lot of “ifs”,
which reminds me…

I spot my
lucky hat near my bag and get that on my head pronto. I can practically feel its
good juju start flowing through me. 

 Names slide down
the screen as I scroll – Rachel, Nick, Mom, Sam, Malcolm, Diamond, Heather, Danielle,
Stephanie. Wait…wait…
WOOZER
! I scroll back up to Heather.

Not only has our
angel called her about a thousand million times, but in her profile pic Heather
wears a bikini that leaves only the exact shade of her nipples to the
imagination. I can barely punch her number into my burner phone. God it’d be a
shame to have to kill her today and take those breasts out of existence.

 The phone
rings on the other end. I realize that about now would be a decent time to come
up with a…

 “Hello?” Her
voice is a like a bell, soft and promising.

 “What the
hell you doing to me Janice?” I scream at her. “You bitch, I loved you!
I…I…loved you.” My voice cracks right on cue.

 “What?”

 “Don’t
what
me. Sheryl done told me yous was grinding all over Manuel at the reception.
Manuel. He’s my step-da for godsake!”

 “Wait, wait,
I think you got the wrong number.” She giggles nervously. “Who is this?”

 I love the Southern
in her voice. Every word sounds like crawdads, Budweiser, and deer season. I
look at the clock running on the computer. I’ve got to keep her on the hook for
at least two minutes.

 “Don’t play
with me Janice. Why you doing this?” My voice is a whimper.

 “I’m
Heather,” Heather responds back. “I don’t know no Janice.” I hear her muffle
the phone for a second. “Don’t know,” she responds to a question outside my
hearing. “Wrong number I think.”

Don’t hang
up. Don’t hang up. Please God, I’ll tattoo Jesus on my neck if she doesn’t hang
up right now.

“Hello?
Hello?” I holler into the phone.

“Look-e-here,”
she comes back with a sigh, “ya got the wrong number.”

“You for
real?” I say, my voice immediately soft and grave.

“Uh-huh.”

I glance at
the clock. One minute to go. “Figures she wouldn’t give me her real number. I
was such a fool. She’s probably laughing at me right now, if her mouth ain’t already
full of Manuel’s…” I cut off with a sob.

 Silence stretches
on the other side of the line.
Please don’t hang up. God, you kept me alive
for a reason. It sure as shit wasn’t to lose Maya.

 
“What’s yer name?” Heather asks.

 “Sal,” I
tell her, “though I guess it should be Sap.”

“Nah, don’t
say that. Sal, I’m sorry yer girl ain’t been faithful. That’s real low of her.”
The phone gets muffled again. “I will. Just give me a minute here. Sal’s got
some troubles.”

 What a
sweetheart. I look up to the three faces staring at me. Bird Brain and Bear are
severely impressed. Chainy, well, I think I could shove a rainbow up his ass
and he’d still look like he was forced to eat broccoli for dinner every day of
his life.

 “She wasn’t
really my girl,” I sniffle. “We were only together one night, but I
thought…Heather, do you believe in love at first sight?” The clock hits the two
minute mark, but brevity is Tarren’s thing. I gotta show these newbies that
it’s okay to enjoy the job, at least a little.

 “Course I do!”
Heather responds, her voice practically squeaking with enthusiasm. I can only
imagine how many times this girl has watched
Love Actually.
“Sal, that
girl, whatshername, don’t you worry ‘bout her. She sounds like a bitch, anyway.”

“I just…” I
breathe heavily into the phone. “Sometimes I don’t think I’m gonna find love.
You know, like it’s just not in the cards for me.”

“You can’t
think like that Sal,” Heather insists. “You sound like a great guy. You just
gotta keep trying. You know, sometimes life can be…can give us some rotten
tomatoes, but that don’t mean the sun ain’t coming out tomorrow.”

 
What?
“Yeah,
guess you’re right,” I mutter.

 “Ya gonna
find love Sal, I know ya are,” Heather says with ardent enthusiasm.

 I hear a
bang on her end of the phone. “Who the hell you talking to?” a tinny voice
yells.

 “No one,
wrong number,” Heather answers, her voice far away like she’s holding the phone
to her side.

 “Hang up,
get naked, and get on the god damn bed!” the voice growls.

 
Whoa,
what the hell is going on over there?

 
“Heather, you still there?” I say,
wondering if I’m going to get slapped with a dial tone.

 “Sal? Sorry,
hon, I gotta go.” Her voice is hurried, and I catch a hint of a nervousness
that I don’t like. “I’ll pray for ya Sal. I’ll ask God to put a good woman in
your path.”

“Can you ask the
big guy to make her as kind and beautiful as you?”

 Heather
giggles. “Bye,” she whispers. A voice screams from her end of the call, “I SAID
GET OFF THE—” The call cuts out. I set the phone down and give a little bow to my
audience.

 “What was
that?” Bird Brain asks.

“Art. True
art,” I tell him and spin the chair around to my open laptop. LuvDragon already
has an address in our chat window. Bingo, Yahtzee, and Connect Four! I type it
into Google Maps and come up with some suburb on the edge of town.

We got ‘em. I
am at record awesome levels today. If Maya were here I’d offer to let her kiss
my feet, and she’d stick her tongue out at me, or pretend to gag, or just smile
and call me an idiot savant in the nicest way possible.

 “What now?” Bear
asks, peering over my shoulder at the map and the little red line that takes us
from our swanky hotel room to the battlefield.

 I turn my
chair around to make sure I have their attention. “Now we shoot people.”

 
My pronouncement doesn’t exactly go
over well, unless you count Chainy. His eyes gleam with an unsettling
anticipation. The kid is a therapist’s wet dream, I swear. Bear is uneasy and
Bird Brain…without meaning to, I actually glance down at his crotch to make
sure we don’t need a cleanup in aisle five.

 I give him a
questioning look, and he surprises me again by squaring his shoulders. I see a
little resolve start mixing with all that fear on his face. Guess I should stop
discounting the guy. He wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a spine somewhere in
his lanky body.

  “Okay,” he
says. “Okay, how do we do that?”

“Do you guys
have guns?”

 “Only
tranquilizers,” Bear admits.

 “I have a
gun,” Chainy says, clearly proud but trying to play it cool. Leave it to the
crazy one to be armed.

 “That gun
doesn’t happen to be registered in your name though, right?” I ask. “Or anyone
related to you, because it would be downright stupid to commit a crime with a
registered gun.”

 Chainy shuts
the hell up.

I honestly
think about leaving right then and there. When I look at my new team all I see
are big glowing Ls on each forehead, which can equally stand for “Loser” or
“Liability”.  I feel the echoes of a migraine starting in my brain. What choice
do I have? Can I really go up against an entire group of angels on my own? If
anything, the Gabettes can at least provide a distraction. I don’t even know
how many angels we’re dealing with, and Maya might somehow be in the mix.

 The beat of
pain grows louder inside my skull. Much as I hate to admit this, I need Tarren
right now. Regardless of the fact that he might be more robot than man on
occasion, he always knows how to play each situation. Also, doesn’t hurt that I
can trust him with my life every time.

 “So we have
an address,” Bear says, breaking through my pity party. “I suggest we set up
cameras, confirm that we’re dealing with these creatures, or angels as you call
them, establish their numbers, and try to determine movement patterns that we
can exploit.”

 Whoa, did
Tarren’s ghost just invade Bear’s body? I could have sworn he and my brother
just had a Vulcan Mind Meld.

 “That’s a
great plan, Yogi,” I tell Bear, “except they have my sister, and seeing as the
weather is breaking, they’ll probably be packing their evil suitcases right
now, ready to move on. No, we have to shoot them. All of them.”

“Yogi?”

I wait a
second, hoping that he’ll get it. Blank stares all around. I look to Sir
Hopsalot, who lies stretched on his belly under the desk.
Seriously, right?
I
think to the bunny.

“Cause you’re
smarter than the average bear,” I sigh.

“Why we still
talking? Let’s go,” Chainy urges and touches his belt. I really, really don’t
want to know what he does with that thing after hours.

“Crazy is
right,” I snap to the Gabettes as I close my laptop and start shoveling my tech
into my bag. “We’ll find an abandoned warehouse, get a little weapons training,
and then it’s go time.”

“You have a
plan?” Bear asks. He’s not mean about it, but I hear the underlying question.
Are
we going to live through this thing?

 
“Course I have a plan,” I scoff at
him. I crouch on the floor, and Sir Hopsalot comes bounding to me. At least one
person in this room trusts me wholeheartedly. I stroke his velvet-soft ears and
then put him into his carrying case. I pack up the rest of his supplies, and when
I stand up, three pairs of eyes follow me.

 “You mind
sharing the plan with the rest of us?” Bear asks, again not unkindly.

 “Not yet.” I
give him a grin big enough to hide my fear. “First, we need a montage!”

 ***

Before our
awesome training montage can really get going, we need a montage-friendly
facility. Chainy seems to know his way around town. He and Bird Brain take the
truck, while I putter behind them in the Bug with Bear as my copilot.

 Man, the guy
asks a lot of questions. I try to get him into a debate about which Doctor he
likes best – the classic opener in any Whovian meet and greet – but he keeps
getting off track, wanting to know how angels are made, about the different
abilities we’ve seen, how we hunt them.

 I give him
the most important info, but I’m careful about letting too many details slip. Tarren
wouldn’t like me spilling the beans, even to an okay dude like Bear. If any of his
crew are captured – a scenario that, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly unlikely – they
could give up our methods and compromise our hunting ability.

 “You just
gotta shoot ‘em,” I tell Bear again. “Head or heart, though head is easier.
They die just like everybody else.” I look over at Bear. His clenched jaw tells
me this info is going down about as easily as cold spinach, but he nods for me
to continue. “Killing really isn’t the hard part,” I say as I slow for a
stoplight. “The real trick is not getting caught. You’ve got to be really
careful about that.”

Funny,
weren’t Maya and I having this same convo just a few days ago?

“And how does
one avoid getting away with murder?” Bear asks, just a tad of a tremble in his
voice.

“Whoa, it
ain’t murder if we’re talking about evil dudes. Murder is like taking out
kittens and children and meemaws. Big, big difference.”

Bear is quiet
for a moment. The Bug’s engine whines in the silence. Finally he says, “What if
a grandmother was turned into an angel?”

Jesus, now he
sounds like Maya trying to paint gray all over what I consider to be pretty
clear lines. “Then she’s not a meemaw anymore,” I explain to Bear. “She’s an
evil dude. Damsel in distress privileges revoked. Right to end her, granted.”

Bear stares
at me. The glasses and frowny face make him look like a college professor about
to scold me for a plagiarized term paper. “I see,” is all he says.

Up ahead, the
truck pulls into an empty, snow-logged parking lot. The Bug does not like this
at all. She whines, and her wheels slip, but I nudge her in next to the truck. I
step out and look around. A darkened building looms in front of us. Yes, this
will do nicely. I don’t see any headlights from the road. My flashlight beam
finds a “For Lease” sign in the front window of the building. I can see the
outline where letters used to hang proudly at the top of the building.

 “This used
to be a bridal warehouse or something,” Chainy says. “Will it work?”

Big, empty,
and away from civilization. “Oh yeah.”

“It’s not
like they’d leave the door unlocked though,” Bird Brain says.

 I have to
give him a pitying look for that. Without further acknowledging his dumbassery,
I walk up to the door and sweep my flashlight around looking around for
cameras. None that I can see. No tracks in the snow. They don’t have a guard.
This place is good and truly abandoned. I reach into my inner pocket and pull
out my lock pick kit.

 Tarren may
whip my ass up, down, and all the way to Sunday in martial arts. He may have a
couple dozen IQ points on me. He may look way better in a pair of
brightly-colored tights and a cape, but I can polish a lock like no one else.

The thick
padlock on this door is a handsome son of a bitch, but he goes down just like
all the rest before him. I get a wedge in there, pop up the pins, and I’m
inviting my new friends out from the cold in a matter of minutes.

 “You’ve got
to teach me that,” Bird Brain says, and yeah, I can’t blame him for the clear
admiration on his face. I can be pretty damn impressive sometimes.

 I expect the
place to be a desert, but a counter stands up front, and empty racks line the
walls of a large inner room. Our feet echo loudly, and the thick shadows that
crowd around our flashlight beams definitely dial up the creepy.  

 Chainy runs
his hands along the wall, searching for lights.

 “Don’t,” I
tell him sharply.

 “Why not?” It’s
too dark to see his expression, but I’m just going to assume he looks mighty
pissed.

“Electrical
use gets recorded,” Bear says, “and someone might see the lights from the
road.”

Ahhh, the
grasshopper learns quickly. I feel a tiny bit better about this team’s chances
for long-term survival.

 “Wipe that
down. Guys, no touching anything. No fingerprints,” I call out. We set up a
circle of flashlights against the wall, and I unzip my duffle bag. Inside are some
very special ladies – three Glocks and one extra Berretta. Thank you Franklin
and your stupid fluffy cat.

 Chainy’s
eyes lovingly gaze at the spankin’ new Bushmaster Carbon 15 rifle on my
shoulder.

 “Not a
chance,” I tell him. “This one is mine.”