The Demon Senders (19 page)

As she sat at the high-top table, Jen let her eyes wander the crowded bar. She never was one to look for anyone substantial in a bar, nor was she the type who would choose a quick fling over a good book and a good night’s rest. But Jen was lonely, and had been so since she ended it with her last boyfriend. That relationship lasted nearly nine months before she found out he had had two other relationships going for about as long, at the same time.

“We’re not married, Jen,” he began his anemic defense. “It’s not like you gave me enough reason to not check out what else was out there.”

She ended it quickly, hoping that he wouldn’t mind losing her from his stable and praying that the breakup would go over smoothly. She feared what he might say, the accusations he could levy. “You’re too fucking boring,” was one she’d heard before. “Do a little more with yourself, and, hey, who knows what could happen?” was another. Or her personal favorite, “I just don’t feel any spark with you.” That one hurt. That one hit too close to home for Jennifer LaMore.

It wasn’t because she lacked energy, passion for life or lived the life of a wallflower that the existence of “spark-less” relationships concerned her so. It was her belief that plain, ordinary people don’t have the sex appeal, the “wow” factor that most men are looking for. That’s what her mother had told her countless times when she would “gently” suggest that her only daughter “loosen up a little, have some fun.”

Jen lived with her mother after her parents divorced. Jen was eleven and running full speed into puberty. The awkward years were certainly no friend to Jen, and her mother’s frequent reminders that, “The secret to a happy life is finding a good man,” were never spared during dinner conversations. Her mother had told Jen that her marriage ended because the spark had died out.

“It goes both ways, sweetheart,” her mother said one evening. “You lose it or he loses it, doesn’t much matter. And, honey, you know that I love you more than anything in this God-forsaken world, but if you don’t show a little spark in your appearance, you won’t have any spark in the bedroom. And a man needs a spark there most of all!”

As her teenage years rolled on and Jen’s best efforts to remove or hide her plain beauty resulted in frustration, she grew to accept that she would have to settle and may never find a man with whom she could make lasting sparks.

Jen was still surveying the room darting her eyes away if her gaze met a guy’s, when Lisa sat back down, her hair covered with freshly fallen snow. “Wait till you hear what Jason just told me. You’re gonna flip.” Lisa flung her head side to side, sending wet snow across the round-top table, as she gave the cursory scene check she had promised Jason she would do.

“Thanks for the shower,” Jen said, using her napkin to dry her face and the top of the table.

“So, little Miss Stacy Pants….”

“That’s the name you’re going with? Little Miss Stacy Pants?”

“Best I could come up with on short notice,” Lisa replied. “Anyway, Little Miss you-know-who has a government issued Blackberry phone. I know what you’re thinking, ‘isn’t Blackberry dead yet?’ They’re not and you’ll be very glad they aren’t. Want to know why?”

“Well, since I’m sitting in a restaurant in the middle of a blizzard and really have nothing else to do, I might as well ask, ‘why am I happy Blackberry isn’t dead?’ ”

“Because, wise ass, it’s a government issued phone, meaning certain people, like maybe some hot Special Agent I may happen to be sleeping with a few nights a week, can access the phone’s location wherever it is in the world. See where I’m going with this?”

“Jason is going to track Congresswoman Flannigan’s location? Can’t he get in trouble for doing something like that?”

“First off,” Lisa said pulling her body closer to the table, “drop the whole Congresswoman talk. Stacy Pants is now her official code name. And second, yes, he could get in huge trouble for tracking Stacy Pants, but I promised him a few favors when I get back.”

“I don’t want to know what favors, do I?”

“Let’s just say I had to
swallow
my pride to get him to track her for us.”

“Disgusting,” Jen said.

“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. I won’t deliver on my promise anyway,” Lisa said, drawing shallowly from her martini while scanning the men lining the bar. “And Jason probably knows that already. He just likes the idea that he can get me to do something for him that I wouldn’t normally do.”

“So this means what for us exactly?”

“He’s going to start sending me her general locations in a bit. I’ll call him when we get near the New Hartford area and then he will start giving us her precise location.”

“We’ll be able to know exactly where she is and won’t run the risk of running into her. That is fabulous.”

“First off, and this is just some friendly advice, no one says, ‘fabulous’ any more. Secondly, you’re exactly right. She’ll have no clue we’re watching her unless we want her to know.” Lisa waved over the waitress, ordered another apple martini, along with a salad for her dinner. “Jason also said that his buddy the trooper lives in the town next to New Hartford and is fine with us using his house as our base headquarters. He ended up getting called in to work tomorrow so we won’t have a police escort, but now that we know exactly where Stacy Pants will be, we won’t need any protection.”

“Probably not,” Jen said. “But if Stacy Pants really is involved in something bad, I’d rather have a cop with me.”

“Don’t worry, Jen. I can handle a snotty freshman any day of the week.”

<<<<>>>>

It was after ten at night before the two friends left the restaurant, made the snowy walk across the parking lot and were back in their shared hotel room. As the two readied themselves for sleep, Lisa checked her messages and saw she had one missed call from Jason and a voice message.

“Hey, Lisa. She left Columbus at fourteen thirty, then drove to Syracuse, New York. Must have hit the same storm you hit. She stopped at a Comfort Suites in East Syracuse. I’ll send updates in the morning when she’s on the move. Glad you two stopped for the night. If you guys do anything exciting, take pictures! I’ll call or text you updates in the morning.”

After filling Jen in, Lisa shoved in her Apple-issued ear buds, wished Jen a goodnight, then fell into silence. Jen knew there would be no more discussions taking place in room 326 that night.
 

Never one gifted with the ability to fall asleep quickly, Jen retrieved her Kindle ebook reader, navigated through her library and clicked on a Richard E. Douglas book. She was never a fan of science fiction, but Douglas was known for creating average characters who were gifted (or cursed) with unique and powerful abilities. Jen often wondered when her unique gift would be revealed.

She knew that gift, the “something” that made her different existed, if only on the distant margins of her reality. She always felt there was something that kept her more closed off from others than she wished. Nothing drastic enough that others could notice or would give them cause to assault her with labels like “standoffish,” “strange,” or “thinks she’s better than everyone else.” Whatever it was, her gift was very much a sideline player throughout her life: Always within view but never having an effect on her life.

It stirred her, however, the moment she met Congresswoman Stacy Flannigan, AKA Stacy Pants. The sideline player stepped, unexpectedly and suddenly, onto the field and gently but firmly insisted on taking an active role. It lasted only for the few minutes Jen was with Flannigan. Then, as quickly as the gift asserted itself, it was gone, back to the sidelines to wait for whatever it was counting down the time to. It left only a vague trace of memories and a slight but lasting tug on her heart. It was an unusual feeling, one that Jen recalled feeling a few times before in her life. But that time with Flannigan, the slight tug and crumbling memories seemed more urgent, more demanding of being noticed. She brushed it off as her nervousness at meeting an actual member of Congress and of finally being part of a powerful team. Though her position was only as Flannigan’s assistant, she knew she would be privy to secrets, to decisions, that might shape the direction of the country.

But the tug remained.

It was only when she quieted herself and allowed the foreign, yet familiar feeling to occupy her thoughts that the tug relented. It was telling her something and she knew she had to find a way to listen and to understand her gift’s words.

In the bed beside her, Jen could hear Lisa’s breathing slowing, growing deeper as she drifted off to sleep. Wishing she had spent the extra few dollars for the self-illuminating Kindle reader and not wanting the light to disturb Lisa, Jen reached for the switch positioned on the bottom of the bedside lamp and turned off the light. As the darkness enveloped the room Jen saw a flash from her Kindle. When she blinked her eyes, the flash took on a clearer form. It was not just one centrally located flash, but several, scattered about and spanning the width and height of her Kindle’s screen. She blinked again, then continued blinking rapidly as the flashes turned into words and letters. The more she blinked, the more distinct and clear the letters became.
 

“You…..ar……eA…..se….nd…..e…..r…….Se……..nd……..he…..r……..back”

Jen flipped the light back on and matched her flashing vision to the book’s page on her reader. Matching locations and comparing the reader’s display to what was flashed to her, she grabbed the pen and notebook that sat on her nightstand, and scribbled “You are a Sender. Send her back.”

Her gift, it seemed, needed to tell her something.

A thought silenced his screams. It was more of a feeling, a knowing, than just a simple thought. Thoughts, for him, were terrifying. For if his thoughts were allowed to string themselves together, what they might produce could serve up a volley of wrenching torture, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in centuries.
 

When he realized it was not only just a feeling but one that held no emotion, he settled himself. The feeling told him that someone was coming. Someone who had no idea about him and who lived in the same realm as he, under the same haze of ignorance and myths as all the others. He was coming, this expected visitor, to bring something to him and this visitor expected that the object he carried would bring about a change. The object his approaching visitor carried was a reminder of what he had shunned in ancient times. It was what he had not chosen to make his.

He pried his eyes open—something he did very seldom—shielding them from the blinding lights with his arm raised above his head. He hated seeing the lights above him for they, too, were reminders. He slammed his eyes closed, unable to bear the brilliance of the lights. Thankful for the distraction of the feeling, he allowed himself a moment of relief when the pain didn’t return.

“He’s coming to kill me,” he bubbled his words into the warm water that surrounded him. It surrounded him now, but it had not always.

He settled back into the murk and wondered, with self-hating thoughts, if his visitor would be successful. Could he be successful? Please…

His thoughts smacked of hope and the twisting resumed.
 

He screamed.

Mosquitoes. That’s what was to blame for the terror that ravaged the cities of Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. Mosquitoes were also to blame for the calamities the befell the suburbs and towns west of Cleveland and Columbus. Westward was the direction the winds blew the fog clouds the day Badr and his band of followers executed phase one of Henry Winchester’s plan.

At first, Badr fully intended to have a crop duster spread the concentrated and genetically altered bacteria over the skies of the two cities. But there were two things wrong with that plan, as it turned out. First, finding a crop-dusting pilot who was willing to fly over a city and release an unknown agent was impossible. Badr’s first assistant had to resort to killing the two pilots he met with in order to ensure their silence. Hiring a pilot was not going to be an option.

The second idea that turned into a “reason against crop dusting,” was to train one of his followers in the finer arts of crop dusting. That would only require learning how to take off, navigate around the cities (and between them) and how to control the release of the fogging agent. Learning to land wasn’t important. A dramatic, Kamikaze-style landing would not only have added to the drama of the day but would also have served to spread whatever remained in the plane’s cargo hold.

Getting someone trained turned out to be a dead idea for several reasons.
 
First, since the terror attacks of 9/11, every flight instruction school worth attending vetted potential students. The second reason was the timing. It turned out that, unlike learning to drive a car, leaning how to crop dust isn’t a matter of a couple loops around a corn field. Crop dusting was damn hard, dangerous, and more specialized than what Badr or anyone else on his leadership team ever imagined. It would have taken months to get someone competent enough to send up in a plane. The cargo that plane would be carrying was as precious as cargos came. Expensive, both in terms of money and human blood. Sending up anyone less than a skilled crop duster was out of the question.

After investing too much time and capital, only to end up scrapping the “death from above” idea, Badr and his team were at a loss. That’s when one member of his senior leadership team suggested that they all, “take a break from the project. Often times, the answer to a problem comes when you’re not thinking about the problem at all.”

Badr slit that man’s throat right then and there, with the other four members of his leadership team sitting around the same kitchen table.

“That should shut him up,” Badr said. “Would anyone else like to suggest that solving our dilemma is of such little importance as to warrant a field trip to a petting zoo? Or perhaps, we should gather our entire team, go to the park near the lake and have a winter picnic. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Clear our thoughts and make room for answers to flutter in.” Badr sat back down after using the very-soon-to-be-deceased man’s shirt sleeve to wipe the blood off his blade. “Wait till he’s dead and get his body out of here.”