"Because sentence against evil work is not executed
speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is
fully so to do evil." Ecclesiastes 8:11
Carrie looked at the data Denisten was sending her on a closed channel. The SWTF's headquarters had been hit and hit hard. Carrie could only hope that she was right about who did it.
"If she got away, if he helped her, we will be inundated with SWTF in the next twenty-four hours," Carrie said. "And the ones we see will be just the tip of the iceberg. If Spider's free, they're going to be waiting to see if she comes to me. I hope she's not that stupid."
"Really?" George asked, looking around the den. Carrie's house had become a pit. Nothing had been cleaned or picked up in weeks. She came to work in clothes that looked as if they'd been slept in, and although so far she seemed to be holding up to her work load, he wondered how long that could last if she didn't get some serious sleep and a decent meal.
"Really," Carrie answered at last. She breathed. "If she comes for me they'll stop her. I'd love to see her, but not dead."
"You have got to quit driving and abusing yourself," George scolded. "You're doing everything it is humanly possible to do. You have got to take time out for yourself, get some rest a real meal."
"Pop tarts are a meal," Carrie said with a smile.
"Carrie . . . "
"I know, George. I know that you're right. But it's easier said than done," Carrie said with a sigh. She stood up and started pacing. "I try to pretend like nothing is happening. I go to work. I do my job. I come home. I try to eat, and then I remember that Spider usually cooks and I wonder where she is, and what or even if she's eating. I wonder if she's thinking about me. Then I sit down to relax and watch TV, and I remember that Spider doesn't watch very much TV. That she usually reads. Then I begin to wonder if I'm ever again going to walk in and find her sleeping in her chair with a book in her hands. I go to bed and I try to sleep and it's just . . . so lonely. I can't quit thinking about her." She started to cry.
George walked over and embraced her. He patted her back in an automatic effort to give comfort.
"It's like I'm in this unending nightmare. I keep thinking that if I wake up it will be over. But I wake up every morning, and it's never over."
"This is good news, though, Carrie. She may be free."
Carrie nodded, pushed him away and dried her eyes. "She's not free even if she got away. She may not be confined any more, but these bastards will never leave her alone. And she could also be dead now. I just don't know, and it's the not knowing that's killing me."
Deacon had been waiting for over an hour. Of course he was the big wig, and that meant he could make Deacon wait while sitting on hot coals if he liked.
Besides, Deacon was in no hurry to meet with him. The guy made his flesh crawl.
"You may go in now, Sir," the secretary announced.
Deacon nodded and stood up. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants legs, walked over and opened the office door. Before he had a chance to open it all the way, the man inside spoke.
"Come on in, Deacon, make yourself at home."
Deacon came in closing the door behind him. He walked over, sat down, and stared across the desk at the oldest living Nazi war criminal. He tried hard not to allow his features to show how he felt about him.
"Our experiments are going very well," he said conversationally.
Deacon swallowed his Are you nuts! retort. "Sir, with all due respect, three of the subjects tore apart this building, killed half of the scientists and over half of the security force, and escaped. Basically without a scratch. God only knows where they are by now, or what they'll do next."
"Which means that we have done our work, and you have not done yours." His thick accent broke as he drove his fist into his desk with every word. "We have built the ultimate soldier, and yet you have failed to secure our secrets or our experiments. There are leaks everywhere. One of your own men helped them for no apparent reason."
"Maybe they gave him a mental push."
"Don't try to make excuses or pretend that you understand how they work . . . Everything that we have worked for, that I have worked for is unraveling before my eyes. I don't care how you do it, but these two—the woman cop and the black boy . . . " You could tell it was practically killing the old fuck to admit that the ultimate soldier was not only not necessarily male, but also, in this case, not Aryan. " . . . must be bred. All we need is sperm from the boy and eggs from the woman. So I don't care if you kill them. I have no emotional attachment to these experiments. Just bring me these things."
"How are we supposed to find them?" Deacon asked.
"That's your job, not mine. I have done my job. Quite excellently well if I may add."
Deacon couldn't help himself. "But you didn't build the Fry Guy. They did it without your work. He's bigger and better than anything you've made, and maybe, just maybe, it's because he's not white."
"Your insubordination will go into the records." He stood up and pounded his fist into his desk. His face went red, and Deacon secretly hoped that this would be the time that the old fuck fell over dead. But, of course, he didn't. "Get out of my office and do as you are told!"
Deacon left. He felt he could die a happy man as long as that old fuck died first.
Spider woke up and tried to replay everything that had happened. She stepped out of the car. It was a little cold, especially since she was still wearing nothing but the white pajamas they had put her in, and she still had no shoes. Robby had built a fire, and she huddled up to it.
Robby and Mark looked up at her. The woman who was now tied up just stared at the fire. Robby handed Spider a sandwich. She took it, sat down on a rock next to the fire, and Mark immediately moved to sit by her curling against her legs. Poor little pecker head was wearing the same thing that she was. She looked around quickly to make sure they weren't in some public park somewhere; they weren't. She couldn't even see a road or any lights in the distance.
"I just drove as far into nowhere as I could. I figured you'd have a plan when you woke up."
Spider nodded. "Good thinking, but I hate to disappoint you . . . See, I don't have any sort of plan."
Spider ate the sandwich and washed it down with the cup of coffee Robby handed her. She felt some better, but her body had been through the mill. Her arms really hurt from jumping down the stairwell and catching herself. Her head where she had slammed it into the floor was pounding. Her legs hurt, her stomach, well, everything, and as neat as the telekinesis had been, it had left her more physically drained than a three-hour training session.
"If it hadn't been for Tommy I never could have done it," she said. "I hope he got out of town OK."
"I'm sure he did," Robby said gently. "How bad was it?"
"Oh, it was bad," Spider said bitterly. She shoved Francis with her free hand. "Wasn't it, bitch? You sick twisted fuck, now you hang in the wind wondering what I'm going to do to you."
The woman was silent.
"She's dark," Robby said. "Get whatever you're going to get out of her, and let's fry her. Let's not drop to their level."
"Right now we need her, and as long as she behaves she can stay alive," Spider said. Then she added on a sadistic note, "Maybe."
"Why'd Jason . . . " Robby stared into the fire. "He might as well have shot himself. Why'd he do it when we were damn near home free?"
"He couldn't afford the luxury of living. He never planned to live through the raid. He had a family. He was looking to redeem himself. I think he felt redeemed."
"He was nice, Mom," Mark said. In the sadness of the moment he had forgotten himself.
Robby laughed, and pointed at Spider. "You? Mom? Now that's rich!"
Spider didn't smile. She looked at Robby and shrugged. "Mark is my son."
Robby stopped laughing. "But you, you're a . . . how?"
"Well why don't you just ask Francis the talking asshole about that. I'm going to try to get some real sleep." She stood, took Mark's hand and walked back to the car.
Robby ran ahead of them. "Wait a minute! I've rigged the seats to make a big bed." He hurried and fixed it. "We have pillows, blankets—all the comforts of home."
"Thanks, Robby," she said. She crawled in and the boy crawled in after her, curling up under the blankets with her.
"Now that I know, he does look like he belongs to you," Robby said. "Get some sleep. I'll take care of everything out here."
When Laura woke up Tommy was already gone. No doubt he was out stalking dinner. She got up and started straightening the cabin. When she was done she grabbed a bucket and started down to the creek to get some water.
She had to admit that Tommy was at least partly right. It was certainly peaceful and relaxing here.
It was also boring as hell.
After awhile nature got damn repetitive. Although she was enjoying long walks and talks with Tommy, she missed her job and her friends, her mom and dad. She missed TV and the stereo. She really missed her washer and dryer.
Tommy seemed more than content to play in the woods all day.
He had raked most of the camp and re-rocked all the trails. He had managed to put one picnic table together out of all the picnic tables he had found and had rebuilt one of the outside grills. He had even dug up some ground and made a garden, transplanting edible weeds and planting some seeds he brought with them. He watered it daily and spent hours trying to find new weeds to plant in it.
In fact Laura couldn't remember a time when Tommy had seemed so relaxed and happy. While she bitched daily about the outhouse—a solid concrete building with a concrete seat that was sitting on a huge concrete tank—the rationing of toilet paper and hygienic items, the lack of any real variety in their diet, and the dullness of their daily routine, the only thing that seemed to perturb Tommy in his blissful roll of Grizzly Chan was worrying about Spider, which he did every time he sat still for a minute. No doubt this was why he worked so hard at keeping busy.
Laura was mostly curious. How the hell had such seemingly normal people like herself, her husband, and Spider Webb landed in the middle of some secret government conspiracy? A conspiracy that had forced she and Tommy into hiding for an indefinite period of time and made Spider fall off the planet?
After days of worrying, Tommy had snuck into a nearby town. He had parked the car in the woods two miles out of town and walked to the nearest pay phone. After trying to figure out who to call, he finally made a call directly to Carrie. Carrie told him that Spider had vanished, but that she believed she was still alive. Then she told him not to try calling again, and she hung up. Tommy returned to the camp very depressed with a sack full of garden seed. But by the time he'd dug up and planted his garden he had all but forgotten about Spider's problems.
Laura sat by the creek for a while and watched the water go by. She was in no hurry to get back to the cabin. No schedule here, no place she had to be at any certain time. They got up when they wanted, and went to bed when they wanted. No hassles no worries. It should have been heaven, and it had been while she was recuperating. In fact, feeling like shit those first couple of days, it was nice not to have to worry about anybody dropping in to visit. It was nice not to have to put on a brave face, and she thought the mountain air and clear spring water had helped her to heal faster, too. In fact, health wise she was feeling better than she had in years, which was good because she only had a small amount of insulin if she needed it. Since she didn't normally take insulin but kept her disease in check with diet and exercise she never kept much on hand, and while Tommy had thought to get everything else they would need he hadn't thought to stock up on her prescription, and neither had she. The five pills she'd had in her purse were all she had and of course she had no testing supplies. Luckily, so far she felt fine.
Getting lots of fresh air and exercise, and the fact that they had no other form of entertainment, had also improved their sex life.
But still, when she weighed the pluses against the minuses, she still wished she were home. She could be sleeping on a real bed, cooking in a real kitchen, bathing in a real bathtub and using a toilet that flushed.
Tommy ran up to her then, not even winded. He was swinging some poor animal by the tail. He was a menace to all things that crawled, walked, swam or flew. The man would quite literally eat anything. This time he had a squirrel. It had taken her a couple of days to get over the "that was a living, breathing animal" thing. Now it was sad, but it was also dinner.
He leaned down and kissed her cheek, then sat down next to her on the rock. He lay the squirrel on the ground beside him away from Laura. "Got something quick today. Think I'm getting better at it."
"Me, too! Scooped that water up first try."
"What's wrong?" Tommy asked.
Laura shrugged.
"Come on," Tommy urged.
"You're really happy here, aren't you?"
Tommy shrugged. "For the first time in my life everything is up to me. I don't have to answer to anyone, except you. When we're hungry we eat; when we're tired we sleep. When I want meat I hunt; when I want fish, I fish. My biggest decision for the day is what do I want to do. The only lives I am responsible for are yours and mine, and our needs are easily filled here. Yes, I am happy here. All my life I have done everything I ever did to please or serve other people. Here I have only to please and serve you and myself. But you're not happy." The last was a statement not a question.
"I didn't think there was anything wrong with our old life," Laura said. "I liked having someplace to go, people depending on me. It gives me a feeling of accomplishment. Here I have no sense of purpose. It's like, what do I do? I live. That's all I do."
Tommy nodded. He knew she was unhappy. "Don't you see, Honey?" he said gently. "Everyone pushes us into believing that we must accomplish something. That each of us has a specific reason for being. Some task we must spend a lifetime discovering and performing. That somehow this something will make us distinct individuals in the world. But the truth is that our only real reason for being is just to be, and very few men change the world enough that they are remembered after they die."
"But we all try. That's what makes us humans," Laura said.
"That's what makes us crazy," Tommy said with a laugh. He stood up, picked up the squirrel and the bucket of water and left.
Laura stared back into the water. Sometimes he made no sense at all.
When Spider woke up she realized that, although it must be daylight outside, the sun was not streaking in on her. She sat up and looked at the shades pulled down on all the windows. Robby had taken regular window shades, adapted them, and screwed them to the roof of the car. He'd fixed the front seats so that when they laid back they met the back seat, making one large bed. Then he'd taken a piece of foam rubber to shove between the two front seats. He'd apparently counted on them having to live in the car. She looked around, and when she didn't see the scientist she shook Robby awake.
"Wha . . . what?" He rubbed his eyes.
"Where's the woman?" Spider asked.
"In the trunk," Robby said sleepily.
Spider laughed and lay back down.
Robby yawned and stretched. He looked at his watch. "It's ten o'clock. I guess we better hit the road."
"Oh, how glorious it is to know what time it is," Spider said stretching herself. "Funny how you can miss such a tiny thing."
"You look like hell," Robby said.
"Well, thank you very much," Spider laughed.
"What are the burn marks from?"
"That damn lightning bolt gun I suppose," Spider said. She looked down at what he was talking about and saw scorched marks on both her pajamas and her skin. She wished he hadn't pointed it out, because now it hurt.
"You can wear some of my clothes for now, but I don't have many. You'll need clothes, and so will the boy. I've still got some of the money you sent me."
Spider nodded. "Good." She got out of the car. She covered Mark up better and then closed the door. Then she walked over to the folding camp table and sat down. For the first time she really noticed the boxes sitting around the camp. They were intriguing.
Robby followed her and started stirring the fire, then he threw on some wood and hit it with some power.
"So, what's all this then?" Spider asked indicating the boxes.
Robby started to tell her. He opened one and showed it to her. "This is my bath box. See, you open it and here's your sink." He pointed to a square pan in one corner. "It has separate partitions for your soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and shaving stuff. Then you have this." He pulled a hose from the box. "The shower." He pulled another hose out the side of the box. "You stick this end into some water, flip this switch here—it's battery operated—and it pumps water up through this hose, and you take a shower."
He closed the box back up and grabbed another. "This one I call the cook box. See, you open it like this. Here's your one-burner Coleman stove. The top is a spice rack, and here's where your pots and pans go."
He closed it up and grabbed another. "This is the food box. It just has different compartments for different food. But see in this corner I have built a small, butane-run refrigerator. One bottle will last about a month. It's perfectly safe and will keep a six-pack of soda and several packets of lunchmeat cool. Vents on the back allow the heat to escape. You just have to be careful you pack it with the vents clear."
He closed it, turned it around, put it down and picked up another box. "This is the light box. So called because it holds . . . " he opened it and pulled a lantern out " . . . a light! It's fluid. It keeps it from getting beat up in the back mostly." He closed it and set it down. "I made the table and chair thing, too. It folds down into a box. All of the boxes have been painted in bright, weather resistant colors, and all boxes are completely waterproof. You can stack them together, strap them with these straps, pull out that wheel, and cart it wherever you need to take it, or . . . This custom-made set fits neatly and completely into the trunk of a Hyundai when there isn't a woman in there." Robby smiled.
Spider laughed. "Hey! I'm sold! You ever think of patenting them? Making them, selling them. There's bound to be a market."
Robby shrugged. "I have lots of ideas. Problem is that it takes money to do things like that, and all my money was always tied up. So was my time. I couldn't justify spending time and money on something that might or might not make us money."
"Well, you're very inventive, Robby. I'm surprised, I mean up till now I just thought you were your typical run of the mill Fry Guy," Spider said.
Robby laughed. "Well shucks, ma'am, you're makin' me blush." He quit laughing then and looked serious. "What do we do now, Spider?"
"We hide until we figure out just what we can do."
The SWTF were everywhere. Outside her house. Outside her office. They followed her to work. They followed her to lunch. She wasn't surprised at all when Deacon showed up at her office door.
"Come in and take a load off, Mr. Deacon," Carrie said without looking up. "I see that I have become the object of your attention again."
Deacon sat down, and she finally looked at him.
"You look like hell," he said without any malice.
"Thanks to you and your people I feel like I'm living in hell," she said. "Please make your point and leave. I'm a very busy woman."
"Fine, I'll make this brief. If you see your lover, it would be in everybody's best interest for you to call me immediately."
Carrie looked back down at her papers to disguise the look on her face. Till right then she hadn't been at all sure that Spider was alive, much less free. "I'm not likely to see her, and we all know I wouldn't turn her in if I did. So, if that's all you have to say . . . "
"It's not." Deacon cleared his throat, so she looked at him again. "This guy she's protecting—the guy that's with her. He's dangerous. He needs to be stopped. You have no idea what this guy can do."
"But you're wrong. I've got a pretty good idea. If you're not going to try to kill or kidnap me, then I suggest you take a hike, because it will be a cold day in hell when I help you."
Deacon got up and started to leave, but he turned in the door. "You have no idea what you are protecting, DA Long. No idea at all."
"And I think you have no idea what you're protecting."
Robby stayed in the car with the prisoner while Spider and the boy went into Wal-Mart to shop. When Robby protested that the boy was wearing only white pajamas, she ripped the bottom off Francis' black skirt and tied it around his waist.
"There, now if anyone asks, I just picked him up from judo practice," Spider told Robby. Robby laughed and shrugged. He hoped she knew what she was doing.
Spider had put a push on Francis, and she sat in the back seat as if there were no place on earth she would have rather been.
It was taking them longer than it would have taken Robby, and he was getting bored.
"So, Franny," Robby started. "Just what made the government decide to build people?"
"Oh, it wasn't us," Francis said. "They started it."
"They, who?"
"The aliens. They found the suitable female candidates and impregnated them. Then there were the Germans . . . "
"Germans!" Robby shrieked.
"Oh, yes, they were the first ones to have absolute proof that the world was being visited by aliens. You see, the Germans found a downed spacecraft. That's how they found out how to make rockets and how they learned what the aliens had been doing. Then they decided to start their own breeding programs. They found the half-breeds the aliens had made and removed the chips the aliens were using to track them. Then they harvested the eggs and sperm and put the embryos into willing German female volunteers. With technology gleaned from the alien ship, the Germans were able to develop test-tube breeding at least fifty years before anyone else even started to investigate the prospect.
"When the US took over the German bases after WWII, they found hundreds of subjects that the Germans had bred, all blond-haired, blue-eyed, and all carrying alien DNA. That was their 'master race.' Of course, the subjects had been horribly brain washed from birth, and were so dangerous that they had to be destroyed, but we didn't destroy the data. Once we knew that the aliens existed, and that they really were experimenting on us, it wasn't that hard to find some of their off-spring. Using the captured research, and in some instances, the actual German scientists, we started our own breeding program here in the States . . . "
"But why?" Robby asked. "I don't understand. Why would you want to do that?"
"Because the aliens are out there. They're out there, and why do you think they're experimenting on us?"
"Because they are curious," Robby shrugged. "To them we must be like lab rats."
"Oh, that's what they would like you to believe. But the truth is they want to take over the world. Total global domination. Then they can use us in whatever manner pleases them . . . "
"Isn't that a little paranoid?" Robby interrupted. "I mean, surely a race that is so technologically advanced could just wipe us out any time they wanted to."
"We're the government. We get paid to be paranoid. Who knows why they haven't made their move? Maybe the fact that we have interrupted their experiment means that we are a little smarter than they thought we were. Our plan is to breed this race of people to their top potential. By leaving them in normal American settings, we hope to avoid making them into the kind of unconscionable killing machines that the German subjects had become. They will grow up with allegiances to home, family and country. If there is an alien invasion, we will have an army of people ready to fight to defend our country."
"If you treat them the way you have treated us, isn't there a very good chance that we may go over to the other side? After all, we are half alien, who's to say where our allegiances may lie?"
"With the people and the families you know. That's just normal psychology."
Robby nodded. That at least made sense. He'd certainly choose his family over a bunch of big-handed aliens.
Spider and Mark came back then with more stuff than he thought they needed. They stacked most of it on Francis. They got in and Robby started the car. He looked over at Spider.
"You're not going to believe what Francis just told me . . . "
"Where the hell is he!" Rudy yelled. "I thought this guy was dependable."
Helen looked at him. "Shush!"
"Don't you shush me, girl! Where's your lover boy?"
"Rudy . . . Robby's in the FBI. No one's supposed to know that he was here on an assignment . . . "
"Oh, God, Helen! When are you ever going to learn? Some pretty boy comes in here with a line you could hang clothes on, and you're in love," Rudy said sympathetically.
Helen started to get mad at him, but his conclusion was not entirely without justification. Helen did have a history of falling for the wrong kinds of guys. But this time Rudy was wrong.
"Why would he leave the day before payday? He was after those SWTF creeps, and you know something went down over there last night," she whispered.
Rudy laughed. "And you think that had something to do with lover boy? Come on, Helen . . . "
"OK, OK. Let's just say you're right. But for my sake could you not mention that he's gone when we have customers?" Helen asked. "They might think I know something, and I could be in big trouble. You know how those guys are."
Rudy nodded and sighed. "OK, Helen." He shook his head. "But you gott ah know that this guy fed you a load of crap."
"I'll do the dishes till you get someone else, if you just please . . . "
"I said I'd keep it on the QT, and I will. Rudy Hardly is nothing if not a man of his word."
As the SWTF personnel started filing in, Helen noticed two things. First, many familiar lunchtime regulars were missing, and second, they weren't talking much. The slices of conversation she did catch sounded like they had just been through a war instead of a day's work.
"We're picking up shit," one was whispering. "We lift up this huge piece of the ceiling, and under it there's like four guys—all dead."
"Shush!" the guy he was talking to ordered.
Helen put the menus and water in front of them and smiled. "Be back in a minute." She hurried away to wait on another customer.
Everything she overheard was in the same vein. This one was dead, or that one was dead. This part of the building was totaled. Estimates on times and amounts of money it would take to repair the damage, etc., etc. But the most interesting piece of conversation had come from a couple of scientists sitting at one of the corner booths.
"My point is," the one said to the other, "that the suits can only protect you from their psychic power. It can't protect you from things they can do with it. Like jerking guns out of your hand, starting the hallways on fire or caving the roof in."
Either these guys had all seen the same sci-fi flick, or something really destructive had taken place at SWTF headquarters last night.
Helen drove by the complex on her way home from work. A paving crew was working on the driveway, and another crew was installing new gates.
When Robbie had said goodbye she'd hoped that he really was feeding her a line, and that he would be back later that night. But he hadn't come back, and he hadn't called, and he didn't come in for work. Now something had definitely happened at the SWTF complex.
She wondered if Robby had been able to get his friend out. Wondered if he was still alive. For the thousandth time she wondered what the hell the SWTF really was.