The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller (29 page)

Lane looks at the rust-colored stains on the handkerchief and knows otherwise. He’s seen it all before. In the Middle East of Portland. Pneumococcal pneumonia. When you’re healthy, the bug languishes in the respiratory tract under the vigilant thumb of the immune system. But when malnutrition sets in, the bug goes on the move. It attacks the alveolar sacs, the little grapes in the lungs that process the exchange of oxygen for carbon dioxide. The battle produces hemorrhaging, which stains the sputum a rust color. Some strains you can nail with antibiotics, some not. And like Bobby said, they charge you either way.

Sasha reaches down and gently pats her sister’s matted hair. Kenny looks troubled, like he senses the truth behind his wife’s euphemisms. Sheena has a hint of death in her eyes.

“How long has she been like this?” Lane asks.

Crystal looks suspicious, like she knows that this line of questioning might reveal the desperate truth of the matter. “Couple of days, that’s all.”

Crystal rises stiffly with Sheena still in her arms. “Think I’m gonna tuck her back in, Bobby. Then I’m going to tuck myself in.”

“ ’Night, darlin’,” Bobby answers wearily. He turns to Kenny and Sasha. “You kids go on, too.”

“But it just got dark,” Kenny protests.

“Yep, that’s right,” Bobby agrees, “and we’re also fresh outta lantern fuel. So go see if you can find some friendly ghosts to play with, okay?”

“Okay.” They trot off slowly to the rear.

“You said you’re doing lawns now?” Lane asks.

“Yeah. Over in the gates by West Linn.”

“How’s business?”

“Crappy. Really crappy.”

“How come?”

“There ain’t no lawns no more. They just landscape the shit out of everything.” He rises slowly to his feet, stretches, and then digs his long hands into his front pockets. “Jesus, I’m beat. Guess I’m turnin’ in, too. You can bag out here in the chair if you want. I’ll show you the trail in the morning. You’re ’bout two miles from the road. That’s probably where your bad guy went.”

As he shuffles off, Lane considers the glum truth about the sick girl and early bedtimes. They simply aren’t getting enough nutritional energy.

The bill of the Colonel’s cap forms a little curved roof over the place where his eye rests on his cheek and he peers into the scope, where the crosshairs settle on the encampment and the glow of the stove. The bearded man facing him through the laminated layers of optics now gets up and walks off into the darkness of the encampment’s inner recesses. The man seated in the canvas chair with the high back remains in place, but out of view. Occasionally, his arm and elbow appear as he shifts position.

It has to be the product. The Colonel takes his eye from the scope, pulls out his handheld, and sends a prearranged message to the contracting party and the Surgeon. It confirms that he’s sighted the product and gives his current geographical coordinates.

Back to the scope. Nothing has changed. The product remains seated facing away from him. He could put a round through the chair back and it would most certainly tear through some part of the upper body, but he just can’t accept that. He wants a clean kill, a single round through the chest cavity and the heart that crumples the victim into an instant, lifeless heap. Sooner or later, the product will exit the chair, and when he does, he will briefly present the necessary silhouette to get the job done. And that’s all the Colonel needs.

The rain beats on the plastic tarp stretched overhead and the runoff splatters into the mud behind the lean-to. Lane stares at the warm glow from the ventilation slits in the woodstove. He knows he must stay awake, but his body has other ideas. His eyelids began to droop. Not good. He starts to rise from the chair to fight off the soft, gray blanket of sleep.

The Colonel is a master of calculated response, and refrains from final action until the perfect slice of time and motion presents itself. As soon as the man starts to rise from the chair, his finger tightens slightly on the fine-tuned trigger, but he controls his squeeze so that the weapon won’t discharge until the entirety of the target’s upper body rises into the center of the crosshairs. By that time, he will have applied a pull pressure of precisely three pounds on the trigger.

The pressure has just passed the point of no return, two pounds, when the lightning flashes.

For Lane, the flash from the sky and the explosive report of the rifle are separated by only a fraction of a second. Without the lightning—a single, brilliant fork stabbing through the clouds—he would have rapidly recognized the sound’s source. But the juxtaposition of the two events creates an instant of confusion, which is compounded by the damage from the rifle shot.
Thap!
A hole appears in the overhead tarp, and a narrow stream of water pours through as the rain-swollen plastic sheet voids itself onto the hot metal surface of the stove top, creating a large, hissing cloud of steam.

In the mist of the steam cloud, Lane propels himself out of the chair and lunges into the night.

The Colonel curses silently as he chambers a second round and the thunder rolls through the valley. His discipline almost carried the day, but the flash triggered a reflexive muscle twitch just large enough to slightly skew his aim. By the time his night vision recovered, all he could see through the scope was a white fog of steam where the stove had been, and no people.

Cautiously he raises the rifle and returns the scope to the lean-to, and realizes how the steam cloud must have come about. His shot went high, punched a hole in the roof, which poured trapped rainwater onto the hot metal. They don’t even know they’ve been shot at. They think the gunshot was thunder. They’re probably out there in the dark looking for something to fix the roof.

The Colonel lifts his eye from the scope and surveys the dimness out in the valley, looking for any sign of motion. Then he gets an extraordinary break. Once again, the lightning lays a brilliant carpet over the open ground, and he sees the product walking, hands in pockets, head and shoulders hunched against the rain. As this instant of illumination fades, he puts his eye back to the scope and catches a momentary glimpse of the man, then all is black once more. He expertly shifts his aim a tiny fraction of a degree, to the spot where the target will take his next
step into the night, and fires.

Lane starts his dive into the wet grass just as the lightning flash passes its peak and begins to fade. The bullet travels so close that he can hear its angry fizz as it tears the sodden air. He lies still, waiting for his eyes to adapt, and fervently hopes that the shooter won’t probe the night with some exploratory rounds.

The Colonel mentally marks the spot he last fired at and moves his scope back to the encampment, where the steam is clearing. The woman has come out and stares at the hissing stove. He grunts and gets to his feet. He can’t wait until daylight to go out there and get the organ to complete the Phase Two procedure. The people in the camp may have a handheld, and by morning, the whole operation could be in serious jeopardy. He chambers another round and advances toward the spot where he put his last shot.

Lane slowly rolls onto his side, brings out his pistol, and comes up on one elbow. His clothes are soaked and he fights to keep from shuddering as the cold rain pelts him. The only sound is the sodden patter of the drops on the hard ground. He faces in the direction of the shot, and his pupils expand to their full capacity. The hills and valley are almost completely black, but the sky is faintly illuminated by the urban glow from the north. By now, the shooter is probably advancing on his position, and when he gets close enough, he will be dimly visible against the sky.

It happens sooner than he expects. The outline of a head pokes above the dark skyline. Lane comes up onto one knee so he can take his shot with two hands and steady his aim. In the process, his kneecap comes down onto an old fragment of tree branch, which launches a little burst of snaps and pops as it comes apart under his weight.

In response, the outlined head instantly disappears, but Lane knows he’s committed. He lowers his aim slightly below where the head vanished and takes his shot. The muzzle flash strobes a figure holding a big rifle with a mounted scope.

Lane immediately knows from the figure’s position that he’s missed, and rolls to one side. An instant later, the shooter fires, painting Lane with a thunderous flash, but the round goes wide.

Fortunately, Lane has played this game before. In alleys, in rotting buildings. Rather than panic and scramble for a new position of safety, he recovers from his roll, comes to his feet in a low crouch, and silently circles to the right, his pistol searching for the slightest hint of sound.

None comes. The shooter is smart, perhaps just as smart as he. Two armed men, probing the blackness in search of sudden death, the odds now dead even.

Then the lightning flashes once more, a brilliant spread of forked fractals stabbing at the nearby hills.

Lane and the Colonel spot each other almost simultaneously, both with weapons held
ready, both with the same distance to turn and shoot. But the Colonel has a fatal handicap: the inertia of his massive rifle. Lane whirls his pistol through a quick quarter-turn and fires four shots in rapid succession. The muzzle flash from the third reveals the Colonel’s arms flying open and the rifle sailing through the air. The fourth shows him toppling backward toward the ground.

“Do you like my tiger kitty?”

Lane opens his eyes to the early morning light. It’s the little girl, Sasha, the one with the sick sister. She sits upright in the lawn chair, holding a little stuffed tiger.

“Yeah, I like your tiger kitty,” Lane mumbles. Pieces of the previous night come flying back at him. The rain, the lighting, the gun battle, the dead killer. He wishes he could close his eyes and sleep it all away.

“Hot damn! It’s a beautiful day, ain’t it?”

Lane looks up to see Bobby come shuffling out from the recesses of the lean-to. “Hey, ya hear that thunder last night? Pretty wild, huh?” Bobby says as he stretches his long, bony arms.

“Pretty wild,” Lane agrees. He has to leave. Right away. If he stays any longer, he’ll put the family in danger again. “Bobby, there was some trouble last night.”

“What kinda trouble?” Bobby asks suspiciously as he sits down.

“Remember I told you I was searching for a bad guy?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he found us before I could find him. After you bagged out, he took a shot at me. You never heard it because of the storm.”

“So what happened then?” Bobby asks as his eyes narrow.

“I went out to check. I ran into the guy and we fired at each other. I hit, he missed. That’s pretty much it.” Lane points out into the grass. “He’s out there dead. Now, to tell you the truth, I think there’s going to be big trouble over this. Really big trouble.”

“But you’re a cop, right? So how can there be trouble?”

“The dead guy’s got powerful friends, even more powerful than the cops. They’re going to come looking for him.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t think you want to wait around and find out, Bobby. You’ve got to pull up stakes and get out of here.”

“And just how in the name of fuckin’ Jesus am I s’posed to do that?” Bobby asks as his fear turns into a desperate anger. “I got no money! I got no job! I got nowhere to go! Nowhere!”

“I know,” Lane sympathizes. “And I feel responsible, so I’d like to help out.”

Lane reaches in his pocket and pulls out one of several money cards that reside there. “Know what this is?”

“Yeah. It’s one of them heavy-duty money cards. Five thousand bucks, I think.”

“That’s right. It’s fully loaded. Here, check it out.”

Bobby takes the card, presses the interactive space, and sees a tiny green LED come on. Then he looks up at Lane, waiting for a trap of some kind. “So how much of it do I get?”

“All of it.”

Bobby’s jaw comes completely unglued and his bargaining posture collapses. “You’re shittin’ me!”

“Nope. There’s only one thing. You have to take Sheena to a doctor right away. She’s in really bad shape. You got that?”

“Got it.”

“Okay, now tell me how to get over to the freeway.”

As Lane walks across the I-5 freeway on the overpass, he watches a truck convoy speed by below. A dozen highway rigs, with an armored vehicle in the front and rear, and several motorcycles on the side. It was said that the security companies hired former bikers as riders, but that was beside the point. The farther you went from the relative safety of the city, the greater the danger of ambush. A lone rig was pretty much a ticket to the grave. They used to hold the drivers for ransom, but not anymore.

Lane reaches the far side of the overpass and heads toward the commercial compound, which holds a fast-food outlet, a convenience store, and two service stations. All sit behind a periphery of a security fence and rolls of barbed wire, with a sandbagged entrance manned by several armed personnel. He draws strong suspicion from the guards, who unsling their weapons at his approach. They almost never see foot traffic.

He pulls out his badge and holds it up. “Lieutenant Lane Anslow, Portland Police Department.”

One of the guards takes his ID and examines it. “How come you’re not driving?” he asks.

Lane pokes his thumb over his shoulder. “We had some car trouble down the road. I need to get to a service station.” His expert eye sweeps over the gate area. He’s in luck. There’s no lobe scanner out here. If there was, it would instantly flag the discrepancy between his Allen Durbin lobe and his Lane Anslow police badge.

He starts toward the nearest service station under a dull sky. Fast-food wrappers blow by on the pavement beneath his feet and snag in the barbed wire. Paper ornaments on a bristled hedge of stainless steel. The warm air hovers near rain.

He contemplates his next move. Somehow, he has to steal a handheld and hope it’s unsecured when he grabs it. The cars parked at the plug-in islands present a possible opportunity. People normally don’t lock their vehicles when they’re charging up. He needs it just long enough
to call Rachel Heinz and have her people pull him out of here.