Henry's Stories

Extreme Makeover - Part 33 of 42

2012-03-16T00:01:00.002-05:00

Chapter 33: Tracking

Deena paused at the door, examining the lock she had destroyed. Was there anything still in the apartment that could identify her?

She was wearing her shoes, the only things of hers that had not been ruined. Bloody clothes were under her arm, wrapped in two layers of black plastic bags.

All the rest of my mess is anonymous, I hope.

It was morning. She took a cautious route out of the apartment complex. All she had to do was get away from Katy’s door unobserved.

In her new body, she was totally unknown. I don’t even have a name.

But that was okay. She wasn’t trying to set up a new life here. She just needed to find Luther, and hopefully Katy.

And to do that, she needed to find the man who shot her.

The street met the highway. Traffic was flowing both directions.

“Twenty-seven miles long and a block wide,” he said. Which way to I go?

...

Thompson watched Ruben edge back behind Leo’s chair. The animal was sensitive to his master’s distress.

“Angelo won’t appreciate it if I keep the Haskell boy any longer than necessary, but I need information and he won’t give it to me.” Leo looked at him. “I need your skills.”

“You don’t need the secretary?”

Leo shook his head. “Whatever it takes. But regardless, I’ll need to ship the boy to Vegas tomorrow. She doesn’t need to come along.”

...

Deena only made it two miles north along the highway before her leg cramped.

“You need to stretch before running that fast,” called a helpful jogger over on the beach.

She knew about stretches, but not how to do them. The running had come so naturally back at home, but these muscles were new, fresh grown, and something wasn’t quite right.

Okay you nanobots, fix it. The cramp eased as she worked the leg, sitting in the sand and looking at the buildings up on the hills.

I can’t just run back and forth along this highway and expect to find Luther. I need a plan.

But she had no way to track either Luther or the people who had killed her. I need a bloodhound, and a scrap of his clothing, like in the movies.

Radio bands were blasting away, much more congested than what she listened to in Crescent City. Cell phone chatter in particular was so widespread as to be nothing but noise. Any chances she had of listening in to a recognizable voice were limited. Someone would have to be within a few feet of her.

I have no information to go on. She only assumed Luther was still in Malibu. There were a zillion people in the Los Angeles area just down the road. Even if all of them lined up for her inspection, she’d never find them in time.

Cautiously putting her weight back on her leg, she walked slowly back towards Katy’s apartment. If there were any evidence, it should be around there.

The sound of the waves and the warm, salty air gave her some comfort. She would also need to find some way to eat. There was nothing back in the apartment but spices and cooking oil.

The nanobots could probably use it, but I’m not ready to start chugging salted olive oil.

The smell of blood caught her attention. She had arrived back at the intersection where she was shot.

That’s my blood.

Morbidly curious, she walked back to where it happened. Old blood and a sharp chemical odor wrinkled her nose.

This didn’t smell as strong when I walked down this way. The nanobots are tinkering with my nose again.

Come to think of it, she had probably asked them to do it. Idle thoughts can be dangerous.

Quickly, she ducked into the bushes and followed the trail. Along with the stink of her blood, there were other smells now—leather, sweat, cayenne pepper, and urine.

Others had been here, more than one of them, probably looking for her body. She smiled smugly. A little mystery won’t hurt.

Down in the grass, she saw a glint of metal. She picked up the two mangled bullets she had pulled out of her chest. The third one was probably long gone. She put them into her pocket and walked back to the street.

Hydrochloric acid. She recognized the smell. Quickly she found where the scent was strongest.

They had cleaned up her bloodstain. A bad-guy cleaning crew has been here.

Back at the intersection, she sniffed the air. The scent was faint, but strongest to the south.

I went the wrong way. She turned south and began a slow jog. I need to walk before I can run.

...

Thompson followed Leo into the ‘guest room’. The boy was still bound to the chair. He picked the chair up and faced him towards the bed, where Katy Ferril was cowering.

Leo sat on the bed facing the boy.

“Luke, I need to know everything about the chests your father stole from Angelo Benedict. I want you to tell me everything, down to the number of times you breathed.”

The boy struggled against the duct tape.

“I told you everything! Dad took the chest out into the desert and buried it. When he went missing, I followed his tracks and saw the disturbed ground. I dug and I found the one chest. That’s all I know!”

Leo said, “I think you know more, and you’ll tell me if you just try harder.” He stood, and nodded to Thompson.

Katy Ferril whimpered as the big man stood over her and grabbed her chin, holding her wide-eyed face.

“Nice face.” Thompson said. A knife clicked open in his other hand. “Pity.”

He brought the blade towards her face. She screamed.

The boy struggled, his muscles tight against the tape, his face distorted into a mask of rage. “No!”

The knife went in. Blood spurted over the bedsheets.

“Stop! Stop it, I tell you!” the boy cried. “I can tell you more. There is more!”

Leo asked quietly, “Tell me.” Thompson paused in his butchery.

“The GPS. The GPS in my car! It probably still has the trail my father left.”

Leo pulled Thompson outside.

“Where is the car?”

“Jorge was sent to dump it.”

“Call him back!”

“Enrico has the phone.”

“Then page him!”

Thompson’s victim was still screaming, irritatingly loud even behind the closed door.

He jerked his head. “And shut her up.”

“Permanently?”

Leo was a cautious man. “No, not until I have the gadget.”

...

Deena settled into a running speed that was comfortable, but wasn’t so fast that it turned people’s heads. The scent of acid had dissipated. I’ve got to keep my eyes open.

But she was headed the right direction, she was sure. She was on the only road. If only Luther would drive by!

Malibu looked to be a residential city. There were few stores. When she passed the university, built up on the hill, things changed a little. There were restaurants and shops. But if you lived in Malibu, she suspected you would go into other parts of the Los Angeles area for your shopping.

The scent of fresh fish from one of the restaurants caused her a twinge of hunger. And it was real hunger, not the absorb-all-nutrients kind of hunger she had experienced coming back to life.

She paused at a public beach. She took off her shoes and waded into the water. Heat was building up from her running and although the darker skin tone hid her dramatic flush, she knew she was radiating too much.

Soaked up to her neck, she waded back and recovered her shoes. She considered how to get something to eat. When this salt water dries, it’ll be itchy.

It might ruin the dress too, but that couldn’t be helped.

Back at the street, she looked hard at the parked cars and sniffed the air, hunting for any clue in her pursuit.

Deena shook her head when she saw the blue and white ‘57 Chevy approaching on the road. No, it can’t be.

But of course, it could. Any traffic at all in this town took the PCH. The driver was frowning, and pulled hastily off to the side of the road. It was no one she knew.

It’s a California tag. I should have memorized Luther’s number.

The driver got out and crossed the road to get to a public phone booth.

Cayenne pepper. She caught a whiff. He’s one of the cleaners.

Which meant Luther had not escaped. He might already be dead.

She had to get closer to the car.

The urge to hide was strong. But I’ve got a different face, different skin. She walked briskly to the side of the car.

He was facing the other direction, and the lock button was in the up position. Hurriedly, she jumped in.

There’s food and money, if I can find it. She could also try to follow him when he drove off.

Everything was in disarray. She recognized her new overnight bag, but everything it had contained was now on the floor. Luther’s bags had been opened, too.

Luther’s cell phone was on the floor, she grabbed it, but it had no battery. And there was a half-bag of beef jerky. Both went into her pockets.

Only seconds! And the change from her purchases wasn’t where she had left it. She peered at the man in the phone booth. He was gesturing with agitation.

And her eyes noticed something on the dashboard.

Luther’s navigator thing! It tracked everywhere the car went. Which meant it would have marked where the cleaners had taken it! If Luther were just at the same place!

She grabbed it, quickly unplugging its power adapter.

Across the street, the man was hanging up the phone.

She slid out the far door and waited until he was watching traffic before she straightened up and walked casually down the sidewalk.

He didn’t drive away. Doors were wrenched open and he was frantically rummaging through the luggage, again.

Deena concealed the GPS behind her arm and kept on walking.

Extreme Makeover - Part 32 of 42

2012-03-14T00:01:00.001-05:00

Chapter 32: Bodywork

Leo Drye said, “Give me that!” Thompson handed him the phone.

He screamed into the handset. “What do you mean you can’t find her?”

Drye cut the excuses off when the man on the other end started to talk. “No details! You’re on a cell phone, stupid.”

He threw the phone onto the floor. Thompson moved to pick it up.

“This is your mess,” Drye growled. “I don’t want to hear about any more problems. Go help them find it.”

Thompson left.

Leo slumped into his chair, watching the near catatonic captives in the monitor.

The boy knew, he must know. He had the gold coins. He must know where the books are.

Angelo Benedict had not told him what those books were, but it was clear what they meant to him.

“I never want to see your face again, unless you bring me my books!”

He was exiled until he corrected the problem.

I had been so sure. The gold coins were important, to be sure, but there had been two chests stolen from Angelo’s office. One was his coin stash. The other had a million in cash, another one point five in bonds. And some books, undescribed.

But there were no signs of cash or bonds among the junk in the Chevy.

He stashed it somewhere. Mark Haskell put it somewhere and the kid found it. He has it. I just have to convince him to tell me.

...

Deena stared at her naked reflection in the mirror. She scooped another spoonful of peanut butter and put it in her mouth. She fully intended to eat everything in the apartment until either her body filled out, or the nanobots told her it was enough.

Secretive little critters. They never said anything.

The reflection showed a horror story. Even cleaned up, she showed bullet-hole scars, and lines she guessed were the results of repair work. All of the new skin was albino white.

Drinking a couple of gallons of water had eased the skeletal look.

Each time at the mirror, things appeared better.

The scars will go away. She was confident of that, at least.

I no longer look like Bryony. She sighed. They killed the Bryony clone. I might as well make it official.

She turned on the clippers and began shaving off blonde hair to the bare scalp. I was Bryony for a bit, but no more.

...

Luther listened to Katy’s hoarse breathing. At least she was asleep, finally. Her bruises and untreated cuts left her with little to do but whimper when she was awake.

I wish I could sleep. Between aching in sympathy with Katy, and monstrous memories of Deena dying before his eyes, there would be no sleep, no rest, for him.

I have to think about something else.

Why couldn’t the nanobots have saved Deena? Why did they have to bail out early? They used her for transportation, and then left. They owed her more than just hair color and muscle tone!

What were the aliens trying to do? Using the native life forms without permission or payment sent a poor message. Eventually, they would want to make contact, wouldn’t they?

Humans would want to contact aliens, but maybe it wasn’t a universal urge. But why else would aliens send the nanobot probe to Earth?

They went straight for the San Andreas Fault. Deena had said that they could gather water. Earthquakes happened when a faultline, under pressure and locked in place, finally slipped free. If nanobots could gather water and deliver it to the right place underground, they could make the fault slip early and trigger an earthquake on demand.

Luther was too emotionally drained to react. So we may have delivered a weapon. The aliens want to hurt us, not to study us. The idea settled over him, adding another layer to bear.

...

Thompson parked behind the other car. Jorge Galvez stepped out the passenger side. Enrico stayed at the wheel.

“This is the place, right?”

Thompson nodded and walked over to the edge of the street. Even in the dim glow of the streetlights, he could see the trail he had made dragging the girl away. Even the bloodstains were visible. It might take a rain or two to wash them away.

But at the end of the trail, there was no sign of the body.

“These?” he pointed to several branching trails radiating from the place where she had been dropped.

Jorge shrugged. “We went looking. But there’s nothing here.”

Thompson turned back. At the brothers’ car, he said. “Clean this.” He pointed to the bloodstain. “After that, you’re done here.”

The brothers looked at each other but neither questioned him.

Thompson watched as they went to work. They were effective at what they did, and they had worked public streets before.

Shortly, the street was stain free. They looked at him, and then left.

Thompson had no intention of bothering Leo Drye any more about this. The man didn’t like to hear bad news.

But neither was he ready to ignore this mystery either.

The girl was dead, no doubt about that. Dead people just don’t get up and walk off.

So, someone had collected her body for their own reasons.

He doubted it was the police. Police would have staked the place out.

Who could have known what happened here and possibly wanted leverage against him or the man he worked for?

Thompson looked uphill, toward the apartment complex, just out of sight around the corner.

...

Deena sat in the closet, reading one of Katy Ferril’s old fashion magazines and eating apples. There were only two rooms in the apartment where light wouldn’t show to the outside. The bathroom and this closet.

When daylight came, she would move back into the bedroom, but for now, she couldn’t sleep and she was uncomfortable eating in the bathroom.

If she could just keep the refrigerator light from coming on every time she reached inside, she would be happy with the arrangement.

I like this one. The magazine model, a dark skinned Latina, was displaying colorful silk scarves. Deena ripped the page out of the magazine and clicked off the light.

Padding barefoot into the bathroom, she closed the door behind her and turned on the vanity lights around the mirror.

Her new black hair was growing out quite well. She passed a comb through it.

Hey, I have a figure again. It wasn’t as good as Bryony’s but that was no longer her goal. The food was going straight to muscle. It was the ultimate dieter’s fantasy.

She had been eating non-stop since she had arrived. It was clear that she wasn’t really digesting the food. It probably reached her stomach, but the busily little nanobots were disassembling it before it reached her intestines.

Maybe I’d better slow down. Her jaws had started to ache from all her chewing.

And it wasn’t only food and water. She had a couple of pennies taped to her stomach for zinc. When the urge to find some element 24 came over her, she rummaged through Katy’s jewelry box until she found a silvery bracelet that felt good to the touch.

A lot of her special ‘gifts’ were coming back. Faintly, like voices heard in the distance, she was beginning to pick up radio signals.

I wish I could go for a run. Being cooped up in this apartment was necessary, but restricting.

But to go outside, she needed to appear healthy, and a lot different from either Deena Brooke or Bryony Sawyer.

She wet the magazine page under the faucet and pasted it to the mirror at eye level.

Side by side, she stared at the model’s face, and her own. Motionless, she lost track of time, but when she was done, her eyes were no longer gray, instead they were a deep dark-chocolate brown so intense it was hard to see her pupils.

...

Kuper Rooney muted the television when the second knock on his door came, louder than the first. “Wait a minute!” He threw on a shirt and opened the door.

“Oh!” He hadn’t seen the man since that first encounter in the bar, but they had talked recently on the phone. “Yes. What do you want?”

Thompson moved in without an invitation. Rooney backed away.

The big man walked through his manager’s apartment, checking each room, opening closets and the refrigerator. He even checked the trash dumpster outside.

“Hey, I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I’ll help any way I can.”

Thompson looked at him as if he were bug that had learned to talk. “If it’s here, I’ll find it.”

Rooney asked, “Hey! Can I rent out the Ferril chick’s apartment?”

Thompson stopped his investigation of the laundry room. “Has she paid her rent?”

Rooney stuttered, “Well...ah, no. She hasn’t paid.” He didn’t meet the man’s eyes. The gold coins hadn’t been official payment had they? He hadn’t mentioned those to anyone.

Thompson said, “Don’t rush it.”

“But if she’s not coming back, I could....” Rooney stalled out under the impassive examination.

Maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to rush it. If the cops asked how he knew she was missing, it could be uncomfortable.

Thompson said, “Show me her apartment.”

“You want to rent it?” He grabbed his set of keys from his desk. “You know someone who might be interested?”

They walked half way there before Thompson’s phone rang.

“Yes.” He stopped. Rooney waited patiently.

...

Deena clicked off the bathroom light the instant she heard the close-by radio signal.

“Yes.”

Once again, she heard the echo of the other side. It was a very irate man, but she couldn’t follow what he said.

“Taking care of business.” The guy on this end didn’t believe in talking.

Deena opened the bathroom door and crept through the darkness to the window. Through a crack in the drapes, she looked over the parking lot.

“Twenty minutes.”

Under the streetlights, the large figure looked cold and demonic.

A gun was pointed at her. It flashed.

She stumbled back, shaken from the memory.

It was the same guy who had killed her. And he was coming to the apartment!

...

“I need you here, right now!” Leo screamed, his voice distorting in the tiny cell phone’s speaker.

“Twenty minutes.” Thompson said, and pressed the END button.

Rooney asked, “Do you still have time to look at the apartment?”

Thompson turned back toward his car. There were other places he would need to check. In spite of appearances, Rooney was still the most likely body snatcher. Perhaps he would drop his guard, now that he appeared to have called off his search.

Someone had the body, and it would have to be disposed of.

But now, Leo needed his expertise. No surprise there. Leo would use a sledgehammer when what was needed was a scalpel.

...

Deena finally realized that he wasn’t coming in. Her heart was still tripping away at a furious pace, but she crawled down from the top shelf in Katy’s closet.

That was stupid. It wasn’t a place that would have hidden her.

And there was evidence of her presence all over the apartment, from the bloody clothes in the trash barrel, to the rows of open food containers lined up on the kitchen counter.

If he had caught me there, naked and in a confined space, I wouldn’t even have been able to defend myself.

“Clothes,” she whispered. Her body shape had stabilized. She had to see if any of Katy’s stuff would fit her.

She picked out a couple of outfits in the dim light and took them to the bathroom where she could see.

The first dress was all wrong.

Not with this skin color.

It was almost done. The nanobots had matched the magazine model’s complexion. She held up her arm, and grinned.

Mom never would let me get a tan. I wonder what she would think now.

Her face and the model’s were certainly different, but she didn’t need to fool the lady’s mother. She just needed a whole new identity that would pass unnoticed in Los Angeles.

This other outfit is too fancy. What else did Katy have?

Rummaging in the closet, she felt a chill, wondering what the gunman would be doing in twenty minutes.

Was Luther in his power, somewhere within twenty minutes driving range?

I should have been ready! I could have followed him back to their hideout.

She located a simple denim dress, a little short for her mother’s taste, but probably conservative for Malibu. It would fit.

Extreme Makeover - Part 31 of 42

2012-03-12T00:01:00.001-05:00

Chapter 31: Beat

One last thought flashed through Deena’s brain as the hydrostatic shock waves from the bullets smashed through her rib cage, her heart, and lungs, rupturing cells throughout her torso.

I want to live!

The nanobots interpreted the order, and went to work.

After the mass conversion to the tectonic project in the San Francisco area, only a small percentage of the nanobots were left in the host body. The remaining orders were limited—archive all the information they had learned about how to control this type of host and monitor the sensory stream. If the host managed to return to the vicinity of the forest transmitter, the information would be passed back to the other nanobots, and perhaps new orders would be sent.

Organizers had calculated the minimum necessary active population and sent the datastores, the assemblers, the pulsers, into protective hibernation in the interior of large bones.

They were prepared to wait over three years before autodestruct timers would cause them to disintegrate.

But now there were new orders.

...

My skin itches, like bugs are crawling all over me.

Memory returned in short clips. Deena saw the flash of the gun. She remembered the world tumbling as she fell back from the impact.

That must have hurt.

It should have killed me.

The impulse to scratch at the itches stalled. Her hand didn’t move.

Oh, no! I’m paralyzed!

But then the full scope of her situation connected.

I’m not breathing. She waited, for the distress of suffocation if nothing else. But it didn’t come.

Maybe I’m dead. She strained to hear her heartbeat. She could hear car traffic in the distance. She could even hear the waves of the Pacific crashing on the beach a couple of blocks away. A bird gave a long drawn out call. Little cricket-like noises were even closer.

But there was no shush-shush of her heartbeat.

I must be dead. The fact caused no shiver, no feeling of terror. More than anything else, her lack of emotional reaction was convincing.

Well, this is annoying.

She much preferred the traditional way. You get shot. You hover over the dead body and go towards the light, get met by friends and relatives who had died before, and go on to heaven.

Daddy? Are you there?

There was no answer.

Her afterlife was seriously messed up. Unless...

Unless her soul had already left—done the floating off to heaven thing. She would have. She was a good girl. Aggravating her mother didn’t really count.

Maybe this was just her decaying brain, left behind like a farm gone to ruin and weeds without an owner to run the place. Once a few more brain cells died, this last burst of consciousness would run its course and she wouldn’t have anything to worry with.

The gun flashed again. In memory, she saw Luther getting out the car, horrified, coming to her rescue.

That was stupid. I hope he realized that and made his escape.

The gun flashed. I’m gonna have nightmares about that. Or no, maybe not.

The itch was getting worse. You don’t suppose...Oh, gross! If she were dead, then the scavengers would already be at work. Those were probably insects. Any moment now the vultures would come down and start to peck away at her eyes. Just as well that I can’t see. Would it hurt?

She was sensing things—hearing, smelling, itching. But the gunshot wound should hurt, and there was nothing but a gaping numbness in her chest.

The gun flashed.

Wait. That was different.

Flash. Flash. Flash.

Her left eyelid was fluttering. That was real light, real vision.

Wait a minute. Corpses don’t start blinking.

...

It was a risk to bring the host brain back to consciousness, but recovery was not going to be possible without host assistance.

For one thing, one of the bullets was blocking the reconstruction of a heart valve. Moving it themselves would take valuable time.

For another, attacks from other life forms were causing new damage to the skin faster than they could repair it. Internal organs had a much higher priority.

Communicating the needed activities would be difficult, but there was no choice.

...

Deena’s first sight after her death was her bloodstained blouse.

Oh, great. Another outfit ruined after one wearing. I’ll never get that stain out.

It’s probably torn, too. There would be a bullet hole.

The blinking eyelid seemed to be on auto, like a windshield wiper.

Her head jerked a fraction of an inch.

When it happened again, the pieces came together.

Nanobots. I still have nanobots.

They were moving her like a puppet.

They’re trying to do something. Well anything more than letting her dead body lie there and decompose was a positive step.

Hey, nanobots! I’m here. Can I help? I do know how to drive this body, you know.

There seemed to be no reaction. Her head kept its minute adjustments.

Okay, if they were trying to move her head, she’d go along with it. Going with the flow, she willed her head to move.

Progress. It wasn’t easy, but it was the first voluntary muscle movement since she had died. Deena was pleased.

Until she saw the gory mess that had been her chest.

Her other eyelid blinked.

They all said I was smart. High IQ, good SAT scores, all that. Let’s see if I can figure this out.

She was looking at the bullet holes. Three of them!

The nanobots had gone to great effort to show them to her. Now they were getting her other eye in shape to be used. The only reason for two eyes was binocular vision.

They wanted her to be able to see clearly and estimate distance correctly.

They need me to do something. I need to move my hand.

It twitched. The left hand was behind her, trapped by her body, but the right hand was free. However, it was still a long way from being under her full control.

Deena put her mind to the task. Shortly, walking like a crab—thumb and index finger—she edged it toward her chest.

The blouse itself was a barrier. Long past worries of modesty, she released the two top buttons.

The bullet holes were clearly visible now.

She could only wince mentally, but that she did. Her index finger pushed past the dried blood and poked inside.

Did the nanobots turn off the pain? If so, she was grateful. The fingernail scraped the bullet. Concentrating, she managed to hook the edge. It took minutes, but she edged it out.

One down.

The second one took longer. It had been deeper.

But by the time she moved her finger to the third bullet hole, she was startled to realize that it had already closed up. She could feel fresh skin forming over the hole.

Her head abruptly relaxed.

Okay, they must be done. Either the bullet wasn’t critical, or it had gone out through her back.

Time to rest, I guess.

There was still no heartbeat. No breathing. Considering where the bullets had gone in, she wasn’t really surprised. If the nanobots could keep oxygen and nutrients moving without a heartbeat, at least in limited fashion, then it would make sense to wait until repairs were completed before they started. No sense in pumping more blood out the holes.

How much of their effort is spent keeping my brain ticking over?

Suddenly, she wasn’t overly worried about scratching the itch. She could do without large muscle movements for now.

...

A honking car woke her. Her eyes opened to the red clouds of sunset.

And a large black beetle walking across her face.

She reacted. Her hand moved quickly, plucked up the insect and dropped it in her mouth. With a crunch, she bit, squirting juice down her throat.

Oh, gag! What did I do?

She shivered. Heartbeat pounded in her ears. She gasped.

I can move!

Struggling against severe weakness, she attempted to sit up.

I need food! That was plain. One clear look at her arm showed why.

Her worst fear of ending up skin and bones was close to reality. She was a skeleton with skin.

The repair work had been extensive, with major reconstruction of her chest—after significant blood loss. That biomass had to come from somewhere. They had scavenged from her other muscles.

I just hope I can walk.

She needed food—more than just stray bugs.

Sitting up, she felt her blouse stick to the ground. How much blood had poured out of her?

The effort caused her heart to beat rapidly.

Slow and steady wins the race.

She rolled to one side. The vegetation showed the trail where she had been dragged. The street had to be that way.

Crawling through the leaves caused some of them to squash against her skin. The moisture felt good. I’m badly dehydrated.

For now, the nanobots had her pain turned off, and her mind was oddly calm about the whole strange situation. She was grateful, but she would need to feel pain, feel thirst and hunger, if she had any hope of getting back to normal.

Bushes lined the street. Low branches gave her the support she needed to stand up.

It was dusk. She was grateful. Bloody, emaciated, wearing torn clothes, anyone who spotted her would know something was wrong.

Now is not the time to get acquainted with a hospital emergency room.

If the nanobots stayed in her, it might be too dangerous to see the inside of a hospital ever again.

...

Reaching apartment 113 took over an hour, including two close calls with passing cars. What little strength remained in her was almost gone by the time she reached the doorknob.

It was locked.

Tears welled up. It’s not fair. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and then tried the knob again.

I was strong before. Nanobots, can you hear me? Make my arm strong again.

She strained against the lock, but it didn’t budge.

Once started, her tears seemed to be flowing on their own. Oh, great. That’s just what I need. More fluid loss. When she tried the doorknob again, her hand slipped from the tears.

She couldn’t stay there in the doorway. People would see her.

But she just knew there was food inside. Katy was missing, but she must have had a refrigerator. Food, water, a bath! Everything she needed was inside.

Gripping tightly, she tried again. With a metallic creak, the knob turned. She was in.

Extreme Makeover - Part 30 of 42

2012-03-09T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 30: Capture

Luther woke in the darkness. Hands and mouth were bound with duct tape. Only the faint hint of daylight around the tail light assemblies gave any illumination, except when the car put on its brakes, and the interior of the trunk was illuminated with a blood red glow.

Every bump of the road turned the ache in his head to agony.

The agony in his chest never stopped.

I killed her. I should have dumped her out of the car once we left town and never looked back.

She’d hate him, but she would have been alive.

What had they done with her? He was alone here in the trunk.

Deena had become just another of the people who crossed Angelo Benedict and disappeared. His heart twisted into knots.

The car made a hard turn and then stopped. He bumped his head on the trunk lid. He waited for the trunk to open.

There were voices, angry voices, hard to understand.

“She broke my leg!” That one came through clearly enough.

Good for you Deena! He wished she could have killed him, killed them all!

It was another twenty minutes before he heard a key inserted into the trunk’s lock.

When it opened, he heard another metallic noise, the slide of an automatic pistol.

He could barely walk, but he stumbled the direction he was prodded. The gunman wasn’t anyone he recognized. Thompson watched, expressionless from a comfortable distance.

Even if I had Deena’s muscles, he’d be able to drop me if I tried anything. Luther never let his eyes stray away from the man he hated more than anyone else in the world.

They walked from the garage, then under an overhanging balcony and into a door held open by another security guard. He stumbled at the threshold and went down on his face, unable to break his fall with his arms tied behind him. The guard left the room and the lock clicked shut.

“Luke?” Katy Ferril came off her bed and to his side the instant she realized who it was.

“Oh my God, you’re covered with blood! What did they do to you?”

...

Leo Drye idly stroked Ruben’s head as he watched Ferril struggle to remove the duct tape from the boy.

“It’s not my blood. They killed Deena.”

“Deena Brooke? The girl you had me meet?”

“Yes. Thompson shot her.”

Leo looked up as his number one man entered the security office.

“I thought you said the girl wasn’t Brooke?”

Thompson stood against the wall. He rarely sat anywhere. “She didn’t match the photo.”

From the speakers, the boy’s voice shook with anger as he described what had happened. Then, when she had freed his arms and he turned to face her, he stopped short.

“Katy! What have they done to you?”

“Leo Drye’s cat-and-mouse games. This is from his dog.”

The boy began examining her wounded arm.

Leo asked Thompson, “Is Boyer taken care of?”

“Gone to the hospital. He’ll be back presently.”

Leo nodded. “I’ll send him to Vegas with the boy. Hire a replacement. One that won’t get sidelined by a teenage girl.”

“Luke, you should never have come back here! You said you wouldn’t!”

“It was Deena. She insisted we come rescue you. I couldn’t talk her out of it.”

On the screen, she sat beside him and put her good arm around his shoulders as he cried.

“I so sorry I put you in danger. I should never have used you to help me get established up there. It was criminally irresponsible!”

Leo asked, “What happened to the body?”

“I stashed it in the bushes.”

“What? To rot in the sun? I don’t want any lose ends waiting around to be discovered.”

“There are no buildings within several hundred yards, and the Galvez brothers will pick it up after dark. I had my hands full with Boyer incapacitated.”

“Well, have them sink her at least twenty miles out. I don’t want pieces of her washing up on Laguna Beach like that last one.”

Thompson began to say something, but Drye shushed him.

“...and they’ll have it already. I thought I was running away when I left. As soon as they open the trunk, they’ll find the coins.

“I’ve really botched up this one.”

Leo snapped his fingers. “The boy’s car. What happened to it?”

“Still parked on the PCH.”

“More loose ends? Go get it, now!”

Thompson walked out.

Leo tossed another treat to Ruben, the only one who never let him down.

...

Mara Brooke heard the bell and grabbed for the phone, only belatedly realizing it was the doorbell. She went to the door.

“Mrs. Brooke?” It was a police officer.

“Yes. Do you have any news about Deena?”

“May I come in?”

She invited him in and he set down the case folder he had been carrying.

“Would you like something to drink?” Her nerves were screaming, and it was a struggle to observe the social niceties.

“No, I just came by to let you know what progress we’ve made.” He wasn’t smiling.

He opened the folder, frowning at the papers within. “We did some checking on Luther Jennings and it appears that the boy doesn’t exist. His school records, his driver’s license, social security number—all are bogus.”

Mara nodded, “Yes?”

“Mrs. Brooke, you don’t appear surprised by this?”

“Oh, the FBI told me about that.”

“The FBI, when?”

She described the meeting. He began taking notes.

“Mrs. Brooke, I don’t know who these men were, but I would have known if the FBI were in Crescent City.”

He questioned her about Agent Thompson and about the information they had given her about Luke Haskell. He stood up. “I need to get this back to the station. I’ll be calling the FBI to see what they know about an agent Thompson.

“Mrs. Brooke, I wish I could give you something more positive, but I just don’t know what’s going on here.”

After she let him out, Mara collapsed into her chair and sobbed into her hands.

Deena! Deena, what have you fallen into?

...

Luther stared at the floor, thinking of Deena.

At least you’ve been spared the brutality of men like Drye. A bullet through the heart was quick and final, not like the death by cuts and bruises and teeth that Drye had in store for them.

He had no illusions. Drye had taken no precautions to keep his identity secret from Katy. Death was a given.

“Why doesn’t he come?” he fretted.

Katy’s voice was muffled from the blankets. “Don’t wish for the devil.” She had taken to hiding under the covers. It was no worse a strategy than staring at the floor, he guessed.

Neither of them were inclined to suicide, probably the only thing that would frustrate their captor. Logically, he should smother Katy with her pillow—as painless a death as he could think of. She would even co-operate.

But that wasn’t a kind of violence that he could embrace. His only option was to attack, to force Drye’s hand. Force him to kill him sooner rather than later.

The next hour was no better. The same thoughts circulated through his brain over and over. He was in a trap with no way out, and he knew it.

A scratch at the door caught his attention. The door lock clicked, and he prepared to make a flying leap at the first person who entered.

The dog burst into the room, barking loudly, then three men.

Katy screamed. Luther aimed high, trying to reach for Drye’s throat.

But the dog and Thompson were both too fast for him.

His left arm was clamped in wet jaws. Thompson was so large and massive that he swatted Luther’s attack away.

Drye watched with glittering eyes as Thompson put a knee in his spine and quickly as a rodeo cowboy, wrapped his arms together with more layers of duct tape.

“Ruben! Back.”

The pressure on his arm released, but the pain didn’t go away.

Thompson lifted him bodily and sat him in the chair. More duct tape, around his neck and ankles, kept him upright.

Drye motioned Thompson back, and moved to within three feet of him. In his hand, he held a half-dozen gold coins.

Angrily, he threw them to the ground.

“Okay, where is the rest of it?”

One coin was still rolling along the floor. Thompson stepped on it.

Luther clamped his teeth together, determined to say nothing to help this monster.

“Thompson.” Drye’s muscle stepped quickly over to the bed and dragged the screaming Katy from her hiding.

Slap. Slap. The sharp crack of his palm on her face echoed in the small bare room.

Drye reached out and twisted Luther’s nose.

“No, I’m not going to be hurting you, Mr. Haskell. I’ll be sending you to Angelo Benedict for that. No, if I don’t get the answer I want, your friend here will suffer.”

He looked at Thompson. Slap. Slap. Slap. Katy whimpered, a rag doll in his grip.

“Where are they?” Leo Drye asked again.

Luther closed his eyes. “The coins are in a big chest, in the trunk of my car.”

“I know that! Where is the other one? The one with the books!”

Katy whimpered as Thompson tightened his grip on her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Leo stood up straight. “That’s not the answer I want.” He nodded to Thompson again.

Extreme Makeover - Part 29 of 42

2012-03-07T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 29: Arrival

Los Angeles out the windshield was metal and glass, entirely different from her view of San Francisco’s white stone buildings. And then they went down Kanan Dume Road, cutting across the shrub-covered hills and through the deep notched canyon down to Malibu by the ocean.

“It’s almost like a small town,” she said as they reached the end.

“Almost. Malibu is twenty-seven miles long and a block wide. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. The Pacific Coast Highway, the PCH, follows the shore between the beach and the mountains and the town built up around the road.”

He drove immediately to the Point Dume Beach access and parked next to the public changing house on the cliff side.

“Deena, I’m absolutely beat. We’re not far from Katy’s house, but I have to catch some sleep before we investigate. There’s a bathroom over there if you need it. Hopefully, we’re out of sight. We should be safe here for now.”

He leaned back in his seat and was breathing heavily within the minute.

Deena quietly unlatched her door and went walking on the beach.

There were a couple of other cars parked nearby. Joggers passed by every few minutes. One of them turned to watch her, giving her a smile.

...

Luther woke to the sound of potato chips crackling.

“Ah, the sleeping beauty awakes,” she said. “Here. I’ve saved you some beef jerky.”

He blinked his eyes hard a couple of times to clear his vision. The smiling face next to him looked pretty good.

“How long have I been out?”

“Hmm, a little over four hours. Did you know you snore?” She held out the snack food sack.

“Not yet. I need to make a visit to the little room.”

Mid-morning air helped him wake up. It was getting warm, but the strong tang of the sea was refreshing on its own.

There were a number of surfers out, including a pair of parasailers. It was a lovely day to spend at the beach.

Others had parked near his location. His Chevy was almost blocked in.

Deena was sitting half out of the car in the open doorway. While he was asleep, she had changed from her gold outfit to embroidered blue jeans and a gauzy white top.

I should have suggested she buy a bikini. She’d look hot.

She already looked adorable. His smile faded. She shouldn’t be here. It was far too dangerous.

Back in the car, he took the offered jerky and cold bottled water from the overpriced vending machine.

“We’ll have to move. I want the car parked where I can burn rubber on the PCH if we’re spotted. This car can go faster than the road can handle. We might even have a chance of getting away if we do it right.”

Deena asked, “What do I do?”

“Sit right here, out of sight.”

“Not on your life! I came here because I can help.” She looked fierce.

He tried to be calm. “It’s too dangerous. I lost both of my parents to these people. I’ve probably already lost Katy. They had a deadly reputation before this ever started. They’ll kill you without a second thought. Do you really want to risk it all?”

She raised her chin. “Do you really want to give up on Aunt Katy just because you’re too scared? Or too macho to be smart?”

He shook his head. “This is crazy! Katy’s already dead, and all we’re doing here is walking into a trap. I’m going to get us out of here before they can spring it on us.”

“No, you’re not! You can’t keep me in this car. Do you think you can? Even Malibu has phone books, I’d bet. I’ll find her myself.”

He thought about it. The only thing that kept him from acting was that it would take some slow and careful driving to get out of this parking place—and Deena wasn’t above jumping out off a moving car.

She said, “I’ve still got muscles, if you’re thinking of holding me. I did some running, on the beach this morning. I can still run fast.”

“You can?” It threw him off. He felt his control of the situation dribble away, second by second. “I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

She smiled, “I know. But we need to think this out, not just blunder through it. What did you plan to do?”

He sighed. Deena had been impossible to control from the moment she invited herself on his day trip to the redwoods. Maybe she was right. Talk and plan first, then act.

“I had intended to park the car on the northbound side of the highway, downhill from Katy’s apartment. Then I was going to walk up to where I could see her place and see if there were any evidence of it being staked out. If it looked clear, I would knock on the door.

“At the first sign of trouble, I’d fly downhill just as fast as I could and drive away. Hopefully they wouldn’t be able to catch me.”

She frowned. “You wouldn’t call first?”

“I did that, back on the laptop, remember? Someone else answered. I suspect they have her phone tapped or rerouted. They couldn’t do anything about a call from Utah, but if it came from Malibu, they would be down on us in a flash.”

“Use the laptop again.”

He was pleased she was thinking cautiously. But he shook his head. “Don’t use the same trick twice. If they figured it out, they’ll be ready for us.”

She nodded. “Okay, but I think I should be the one to walk up to her apartment. You stay in the car with the engine running. I can run faster than you can.”

He frowned, “Can you really run thirty miles per hour?”

Deena blushed. “Okay, maybe not now. I tested it. My muscles are still strong. When I tried to really turn on the gas, I did go faster, but then I faded within just a couple of seconds. The nanobots left my muscles in great shape, but there’s something else they did to help my stamina that isn’t there anymore.”

“Oxygen transport maybe. With a zillion little machines in your blood they could dynamically handle the oxygen load, the heating, maybe even your nerve impulses. Just be glad they left you in as good a shape as they did.”

“Yes, I had a nightmare last night of turning into a big puddle and sinking into the ground.” She shivered.

Luther pressed his point, “Then, there really isn’t a good reason you should go to the apartment instead of me, is there?”

Deena nodded, “Oh yes, there is!”

...

Deena’s heart was beating fast as she walked slowly up the street, wishing she hadn’t won the argument. Luther had been unnecessarily graphic in his description of what the bad-guys would do to her if they caught her. She was sure he was trying to get her to back out, and that is one thing she wasn’t about to do!

The street climbed the instant it left the highway. There wasn’t much flat land in Malibu, apparently. That much easier to run back to the car, if she spooked.

At the first bend in the road, she lost sight of Luther. She knew that was coming.

“Hello, Katy Ferril, you don’t know me, but I know you.” She whispered her introduction. She’d need it if Katy answered the door. Katy wouldn’t recognize her, not now.

That had been her ace card with Luther. The people he feared knew what he looked like, but even if they had a picture of Deena Brooke, they’d never connect it with the way she looked now. As far as they were concerned, she could be any Malibu girl.

She turned left at the entrance to the apartment complex. Number 113. Where is 113?

When she passed the mailboxes, something hard and metal poked into her back.

“Just be still, Miss Sawyer.”

The voice was flat and menacing. They think I’m Bryony!

“I’ve got her,” the man whispered. “Yes. Okay I’ll check.” He grabbed her arm and turned her around. His broad face showed confusion.

“Thompson,” he spoke into a radio, “it’s not her.”

Radio. They’ve been sneaking up on me using radio! Where are radio nanobots when you need them!

She forced herself to look angry, “I don’t know who you think you’re looking for, but if you don’t let me go I’ll scream!”

He didn’t pay any attention.

“I know! But she got out of his car. I don’t know. Maybe he’s got a dozen girlfriends. But I know this one is with him.”

They have Luther spotted! This was such a stupid plan.

Hard fingers gripped her arm and forced her back down the road.

“I’ll be in position in another minute.”

Deena walked, sullen, but following his lead. It wasn’t time yet. They turned at the corner.

I have just one chance at this. She opened her mouth and forced herself to breathe rapidly and deep. Oxygen. Get lots of oxygen.

The front bumper of the Chevy came into view. Almost.

She prayed, but she didn’t have time to put it into words.

Go! Using her re-tuned muscles, she broke free of his grip. Before he could react, and point that gun back at her, she kicked at his leg, hard.

She could hear the crack of his leg bone, but she was already running.

“Luther!” she screamed, as loudly as she could.

A few more steps, and she could see his face behind the windshield, eyes wide and startled. She put everything she had into the downhill run.

Out of the bushes next to the street, halfway between her and Luther, another figure appeared. He raised a large gun and aimed it at her. She saw a flash of light.

...

Luther heard Deena’s shout. He leaned forward, seeing her break free of a falling man.

Oh, no! They’ve got her!

Forgetting their plan as the fear wiped everything else from his mind, he reached for the door handle.

And then, the huge figure of many of his nightmares appeared out of the bushes. Thompson! It all appeared in slow motion as he dragged himself out of the car slowly as molasses. Thompson’s gun swung leisurely towards Deena.

Only the blonde racer appeared to be moving at normal speed as she came towards him with her mouth wide, screaming.

Pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow. The rhythm of the bullets was businesslike, an even burst. Smoke and expended brass sailed away from the gun in Thompson’s hand.

Deena’s forward progress halted as the bullets knocked her off her feet and threw her back. He could see blonde hair fly around her face as she fell.

“No!” he yelled, racing around the front of the car, ignoring Thompson, ignoring his gun, ignoring everything but the sight of crumpled blue and white on the side of the road.

His heart was pounding in his chest as he reached her.

“Deena!” He turned her over.

Three large evenly spaced red splotches were spreading through the gauzy white fabric, the bullet holes were bubbling impossible bright red. Deena’s eyes were wide open and unfocussed. Her body was a limp as a rag.

He felt for a pulse on her neck. Nothing. He pushed his ear against her chest. Warm red blood smeared his face, but there was no heartbeat to hear. The blood had stopped gushing, merely oozing out as the heart no longer pumped.

“Deena?” he whispered.

Heavy footsteps were approaching. It was death coming for him, too.

Gently, he took her head and kissed her, tasting only her blood.

Sharp pain exploded in his head.

Extreme Makeover - Part 28 of 42

2012-03-05T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 28: Drive

Luther watched her sleep as he drove. Interstate 5 was definitely faster than the coastal routes.

A passing headlight illuminated her face.

She had been such a little princess there at the store. Shopping had boosted her spirits as much as the food had energized her body.

She was cute, too.

He sighed. I know, “Don’t get any ideas.”

But I’m a guy.

There was a reason he hadn’t wanted a girl friend in Crescent City. Keep your distance and keep your sanity.

This road trip was murder. He hadn’t been out of touching range for hours. And he did get ideas about touching.

But touching leads to kissing. And kissing leads very quickly to complications he couldn’t handle.

For her own safety, I have to send her back home, as quickly as possible.

I can’t do that if we get too close.

Cads and Dads. He’d read a sociobiology book once that claimed there were two natural lifestyles for human males; each designed to efficiently pass on a guy’s genes.

The Cad had sex with as many women as he could, spending seduction time and gifts to get access to them. Any children he sired were on their own.

The Dad concentrated on one mate, and spent his resources raising and protecting his progeny.

It was too simplistic to think you could classify every man as either-or, but Luther was sure there was some truth in it.

Dad was a Dad. He had turned out to be a thief, and that still hurt, but he had always been faithful to Mom.

Even as close as Matt Haskell had been to Katy Ferril, his secretary, there had never been any hint that they had crossed the lines.

And Luther knew, in his gut, that when he...if he found a mate, there would be no going back.

...

On the outskirts of Bakersfield, Luther pulled off the highway and into a gas station.

Deena stirred.

“I’m just getting gas. You can stay asleep.”

She blinked and stretched out her arms and legs, twisting like a cat, doing things to Luther that she could never imagine.

“It’s okay. I need to go inside anyway.”

He handed her a couple of bills. “Get me something to drink. Lots of caffeine.”

Pay-at-the-pump is great if you have a credit card that you dared to use. Luther had to make other arrangements to get a fill-up. Once they finished in the Los Angeles area, he’d get an anonymous pre-paid debit card. It made things so much easier.

Deena returned with a large sack. There were chips, candy, nuts, jerky and of course, the cold drinks.

“You’re going to have to watch your diet. You don’t have the nanobots to watch out for you anymore.”

She nodded. “It’s an experiment. I mean, in what condition did they leave my body anyway? Do I have the appetite of old fat Deena, or has it been adjusted to the new thin Deena’s needs?

“There was a scale inside. I’m going to be watching my weight very carefully. But just at first, I’m not on a diet. I’ll eat when I’m hungry, and see what happens.”

He paid the gas bill and made his own pit stop, and then they were back on the road.

Deena had her bare legs propped up on the dash, checking the long muscles with her fingers.

“You know, I could have done all of this without the nanobots. It would have taken years, but there’s nothing in my bone structure or heredity that forced me to be fat. It was all bad choices and bad training.

“By the time I was even aware of ‘fatness’, I was already down that road, with not a clue how to turn around.”

Luther patted his own stomach. “I’ve got my own extra padding.”

“You’re not fat.”

“Not much, but I’m hardly the lean athlete like Bill or Hank. I didn’t want to get into the competition—suppose I was actually good, and then what would I do?

“I’ve just been comfortable with where I’m at.”

Deena pointed, “That’s exactly what happened to me! I didn’t like being fat, but I was comfortable with it.

“Dieting, struggling hard to lose a single pound—it’s a lot of work for nothing more that a bookkeeping entry! I mean, I couldn’t see that lost pound. I couldn’t feel it. I still wore the same clothes.

“And nobody else could see it either. It just wasn’t worth it.”

Deena ran her hands down her torso and felt the legs’ firm muscle tone.

“It’s different now. If I gain a pound, I’ll know it! The thin people have all the advantages in dieting. When I was fat, I’d have to lose twenty or thirty pounds, with no feedback, before it did any good.

“It just isn’t fair. And I’m glad I’m on this side for once. I intend to stay this way!”

...

“Nanobots don’t have opinions,” he said when she asked what the invaders thought about their host.

“What do you mean?”

“They’re just machines. They’re not little people—not even little aliens. They couldn’t be.”

She didn’t interrupt, but her expression demanded more.

He liked to talk things out. “You said something about them changing from one kind to another. You said you were a factory, where they were made.

“Personalities don’t just happen instantly. They have to grow, over time. I just don’t think any factory, even a magical alien nanobot factory could produce personalities—people, not in just a few days. And if they did, what happens when they convert one kind to another?

“No, they’re just machines. Maybe even smart ones. But they are gadgets responding to their orders.”

Deena thought it over. “I can live with that. I don’t expect my flu virus to have a personality either, it’s just that these nanobots are doing some very smart things, and not just calculating eleven factorial either.”

Luther nodded, “I didn’t say they weren’t smart. They’d pretty much have to be.” He cocked his head to the side. “I think they’re an alien space probe.”

“Like the Mars rovers?”

“Right. It’s really hard to get a camera with a radio to another planet. Just think how much harder it’d be to get to another star. Warp drive and wormholes are all just fiction, for now. Sending a spaceship with live people is nearly impossible.

“Maybe aliens, light-years away, detected us, just like we are discovering new planets around other stars. They want to know about us, but can’t afford the enormous cost and centuries-long travel times needed to get here in person.”

Deena nodded. “They send a space probe.”

“Right. But even a simple camera and a radio transmitter powerful enough to talk that distance would be a huge thing, very massive. Making a big thing go fast enough would be very expensive.

“But if they had nanotechnology, they could just send some very smart nanobots. The whole probe might be something small enough to hold in one hand—something so lightweight that they could shoot it out of a big gun or a linear accelerator.

“Once it gets to our solar system, it finds the right planet and, somehow, gets to the surface.”

Deena could visualize it. She nodded, “Then it grows its own radio transmitter.”

“Right. I wonder about your grove of redwoods. If you think of them as a forest of radio towers, it doesn’t sound so strange.

“They could also infect some of the animals that pass through the forest. Elk and deer and rabbits and high-school students.”

Deena fingered her chin. “And then they figure out how human bodies work and start to repair me. That doesn’t sound like an information gathering system does it? Shouldn’t they just gather data and leave everything undisturbed?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “I’m just guessing. Maybe host bodies are considered differently.”

“So they fix me up, and broadcast data about us back to Alpha Centari or wherever?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they aren’t even interested in humans. Perhaps the only logical things to investigate are the trees, or the ocean. We’re dealing with aliens here. Their motives might just be that—alien.”

“Motives! I thought we decided they were machines?”

“Machines that take their orders from aliens. The true aliens are probably still at home, light-years away. But the nanobots had to get their orders somewhere.

“The nanobots do the magic, but the aliens set the agenda.”

Deena asked, “So why make me heal faster, why make me lose weight, run faster, calculate instantly? Why make me blonde?”

“All good questions,” he intoned wisely. Then he shook his head. “Some make sense, some don’t.”

“None of it makes sense.” Deena said, disgustedly, reaching for a can of peanuts. She opened it up and offered some.

He grabbed a handful.

“Sure it does. Maybe infecting animals isn’t to gather information. Maybe it’s transportation. A single nanobot could drift on the wind, but I’ll bet they have to live in colonies. Otherwise, why collect in droplets when leaving the redwood, or when they left you.

“A colony of nanobots would have to ride a host to get anywhere. You were transportation, so they fixed you up, supercharged your engine, trimmed the weight, and then gave you the urge to travel south.”

“Then when I got there, they bailed out and left me.” She reached into the sack. “Want a coke? I’m thirsty.”

“Yes. Thanks.”

She brushed the salt off her fingers and dug into the sack. A passing light as they drove down the highway showed her frown.

“I guess I can’t complain too much. They paid their toll. I just wish I understood it better.”

“If they stayed longer, maybe you would have. They were leaking.”

“Leaking? Explain.”

“Information leakage. They made connections to your brain—probably just to make you hunt for the zinc and other trace elements they needed, and then to give you itchy feet and to head south. Sometimes they took over completely and you had your sleepwalking episodes.

“But much more came through. I see no reason at all for them to let you listen to the radio, or to make the instant calculations, or let you question them about telepathy.

“I’ll bet they’re just machines following orders. When they crossed a few wires, they accidentally let you give them some orders, too.”

He took her hand in his. “How much of this drive to convert you into a Bryony Sawyer clone was their doing, and how much of it was just leakage from your own subconscious desires?”

...

By the time they took IH-405 into the San Fernando Valley, Deena had dropped off to sleep again. Sunrise was only an hour or so away, so Luther pushed hard to get through to Malibu before the morning L.A. traffic started in earnest.

Time to stop worrying about aliens and pay attention to the true monsters. How can I hunt for Katy without coming up on Benedict’s radar?

A Corvette swung into his lane and on past. By the time he had reacted, the lead-footed driver was already speeding away.

“Luther?” Deena woke and sat up straight.

“City traffic. It’s okay.”

She nodded. “I was dreaming.”

“We’ve still a ways to go. Go back to sleep.”

“No. Luther, I just remembered something. Right before they left me, there was a big surge of heat. All the radio bugs were being converted into something different. Something that would live underground.”

“You mentioned that. What did they intend to do?”

She shrugged. “It’s just ... I think they had something to do with water.”

“Water? We were next to that lake.”

Luther filed the information away. A part of him clamored to analyze this latest fact, but he couldn’t spare the time.

He nodded to the road sign. “We’re in hostile territory now. If you remember anything more, make a note of it, but I need to keep my mind on the hunt for Katy.

“The Benedict people probably have pictures of me, maybe my car and by now, pictures of you, too. I know only one or two of them by sight. We’re at a big disadvantage.”

“You have a plan?”

“Maybe. Just what I said before. Check her house, then call the police.”

He gave a big sigh. “What I wouldn’t give to find her safe at home!”

“What are the chances of that?”

“Slim, very slim. Thompson had seen her. He was chasing her when she called. I think she either made it to the police, or Benedict’s people have her, or....”

“Or?”

“Or she’s dead already.”

Extreme Makeover - Part 27 of 42

2012-03-02T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 27: Shopping

Luther didn’t really know what to do with the devastated girl crying on his chest. He could feel the wetness of her tears soaking through his shirt.

Just wait it out. He held her gently.

There had been days, after his parent’s disappearance, when he had curled up into a ball, unable to put into words the way his spirit had been crushed. It wasn’t something to fix, it was just something to be survived.

He stopped himself from making too great a comparison between them. Losing your parents was catastrophic, but he had no idea what she was going through.

It was too easy to make light of other people’s hurt.

After she had calmed down a bit, he asked, “Can you stand?”

She nodded. He carefully extricated himself from her arms and lifted her to her feet. For a few seconds, she stood, but then she wavered.

“Here, I’ll steady you.”

“Sorry. I’m so weak.”

He supported her with his arm around her, and she was surprisingly light. At the car, he helped her in.

Under the dome light, he looked her over.

“Deena, for once, you are definitely too thin.”

She nodded, “They left me.”

He checked her pulse, and her breathing. Other than exhaustion, she appeared to be okay.

“Next stop, food.”

She agreed. He drove on south, looking for a restaurant. In spite of her protests, with a comb through her lengthened blonde hair and a touch-up around her eyes, she looked presentable enough to go inside the pancake place.

He had to steady her, but her appetite was strong. They ordered heavy.

...

Deena poured on more syrup. “Why did they leave me like that?”

Luther shrugged. “Maybe this was the ‘south’ they steered you towards. You were in a trance when they drained out of you. Do you remember anything about it?”

She chewed and closed her eyes.

“Maybe.” She looked at him. “I think, right at the last, they were changing. There were different kinds. They weren’t all ‘assemblers’. The radio ones were all taken apart and converted into something new. They had their orders and they didn’t need to talk to the grove anymore.”

Luther finished off his omelet. “Do you have any idea what they converted into?”

She shook her head. “I’m not even sure of what I just told you. It’s not magical knowledge anymore. It’s just plain old defective human memory.”

“What’s eleven factorial?”

She blinked. “You asked me that before, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and you calculated it instantly.”

“Well, not this time. I don’t know.”

She frowned at her plate.

“Do you have a pocket knife?”

“Yes.”

“Hand it over.”

The red Swiss Army knife was scarred from years of use, but it was well cared for. Deena pulled out a blade.

“Is this sharp?”

“It should be. Be careful.”

Nodding, she pulled it against her hand by her thumb.

“Ouch!” Blood started welling up from the shallow cut.

“Hey, don’t do that,” he complained, taking the knife back.

“I had to know.” She watched as a drop of blood dripped to the table.

“Take this.” He handed over his clean napkin. She pressed it against the cut. The blood clotted soon enough.

She sighed. Tears formed in pools under her eyes.

He put his hand on hers. “It’s okay.”

“I know. It’s just that...I’m ordinary again.”

...

“Hey, look on the bright side. You’ve had a weight-loss program that people would have paid thousands of dollars for. You’ve got blonde hair, for a while.

“And you’ve had an adventure like no one else.”

She nodded. “It also means I’ll have to start watching what I eat, or I’ll blimp up to my old size. The blonde hair will grow out my old brown and I’ll probably get stretch marks in my skin as I grow fat too fast.”

He paid the check and Deena insisted she walk without help. Arms held out for balance, she walked with more confidence each step.

“I think my muscles are okay. Maybe they just drained my energy reserves.”

At the car by the streetlights, she looked at herself in the window’s reflection.

“They used me. They made me into a walking factory, turned off my brain and steered me here. All for the transportation.”

Luther stared back down the road. “Do you have any idea what the new version nanobots were designed to do? I worry that we may have been part of something sinister.”

She shook her head. “It’s been confusing.”

There was something missing, some piece that he should be seeing.

But maybe they should get on down the road.

...

Out of the corner of Luther’s eye, he kept watch on her. She looked stern, staring ahead as they drove along the fault line lakes.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to the 101.”

She shrugged.

Should I bring up my second thoughts about Malibu?

Deena had insisted she come, because she had special abilities. Well, those were gone now. By rights, he should drop her off here, and leave her a few coins to buy her way back to Crescent City.

He could do a better job of hunting for Katy if he did it alone.

They approached a shopping center. He looked for a coin shop.

Deena was looking too.

“Luther, do you have some cash?”

He blinked. “Well, yes, some. Why?”

She pointed to the stores. “I want to do some shopping.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Right now! I’ve got Bryony’s figure. I’ve got Bryony’s hair. I’ve even got her giggle if I practice.

“Soon enough that will all go away. My hair will grow back brown. I don’t have the eating habits appropriate for this size, so I’ll be fighting weight.

“What I don’t have is Bryony’s clothes.”

She ran her fingers down the red plaid shirt. “This may look great on you, but for once, just once, I want to look like her!”

Deena looked him in the eye. “I don’t deserve it. I can’t pay you back. And probably, I’ll only get to wear them a few times before I gain too much weight.

“But please,” she asked, in a timid little voice, “buy me a couple of nice outfits, like Bryony always wore?”

He pulled into the parking lot.

“I’ll do it, but only if you agree to let me go on to Malibu alone. It’s too dangerous, and you no longer heal fast.”

Deena shook her head. “No.” As weak as she was, bruised mentally, her voice was firm.

They waited.

“I’m only concerned for your safety.”

“We already made this decision.”

“Things have changed.”

“Not that much.”

He sighed, giving in. “Okay, but you have to let me drive all night, if necessary, to get to Malibu. We’ve had too many delays already.”

“Agreed.”

...

He escorted her inside. The food, and the excitement of shopping had really perked her up. Casually, he read the price tags on the things she was looking at.

Obviously, she had forgotten how limited his cash was.

But he had handled this problem before. Leaving Deena to her shopping, he walked over to the Food Court. Scanning the dozens of teens inhabiting the place, he decided on his proxy.

The guy in baggy pants was leaning up beside a video game.

“Hello. I have a business proposition for you.”

Eyes looked over silvered sunglasses. “And what would that be?”

Luther pulled out a Golden Eagle. “One ounce of gold coin.” The teen’s eyes locked onto it. He leaned away from the wall.

“I want you to walk over to that shop.” He pointed over to the gold and coin store. “Ask them what this is worth. They should say something like nine hundred dollars or better. Come back and I’ll sell you five of them for half price, in cash.”

The dude was fast with the math, “Where would I come up with that much cash?”

Luther shrugged. “You have friends. If not, I’ll make the deal with someone else.”

Cautiously, the guy took the coin and felt its weight. Then he said, “Let me see the others.”

Luther fished the other four out of his pocket and fanned them out in his palm. The guy exchanged the one Luther had offered for one of the others, grinned, and jogged over to the coin shop.

...

Deena waited patiently with her purchases at the counter.

Luther wouldn’t have skipped out on me.

She practiced her smile in the mirror. Bryony could melt any boy with a flash of her smile. Mine looks too serious.

There was something missing. Maybe when she changed clothes it would help. She still looked like a shrunken lumberjack in Luther’s shirt.

“Nice shirt.”

She spun around. Luther was leaning against a pillar, watching her.

“Ah, hi. I’m just waiting to check out.”

“Need some cash?”

She nodded.

Luther handed her a fat wad of bills and she purchased the clothes, the makeup and the overnight bag. As soon as the clerk removed the anti-theft tags, she packed the bag and headed for the restroom.

...

A shopping center restroom was hardly her first choice for a place to clean up, but it was all she had.

All the little bugs are gone. It’s just me now. I’ve got to do the best with what I’ve got.

If she had known that she would be grieving over the loss of invading aliens a few weeks ago, she would have known that she was going insane.

But they made me special. They re-made me.

And with Luther’s cash, the makeover was nearly complete.

She applied the eyeliner, trying to keep it subtle. With the new hair and with the new clothes, she really had no need for the distraction of too much makeup.

I could use a professional cut. Luther was a bit uneven with the scissors.

Finally, it was done. Matching gold shorts and blouse showed off her legs and face nicely. In the mirror, she could see nothing wrong—for once in her life.

But I don’t feel as special as I did, running at top speed, energized by the nanobots.

She collected her comb and makeup and put everything back in the bag. A few coins, change from Luther’s cash, caught her attention. She touched each one, but there was no instant recognition of the elements.

She picked up the penny, then scraped it against the stone wall. A few silvery scratches showed. Zinc.

No tingle of anticipation. She sighed, then stuck it in her waistband next to her skin. Just for luck.

Extreme Makeover - Part 26 of 42

2012-02-29T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 26: Blood

Rush hour traffic slowed their progress towards the Golden Gate Bridge.

Luther churned away at the idea that Deena was infested with these nanobots. Intellectually, the idea was fascinating. In his gut, he was skeptical.

“Have you seen the healing happen?”

“You can see it. Here, take a look at my hand. No scar or nothing.”

“No, I mean have you watched the skin close up, before your eyes.”

Deena shivered, “I wouldn’t want to. I’m squeamish.”

He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “I wish I could do an experiment.”

“What kind of an experiment?” Deena didn’t like the sound of his voice.

“Well, so much of this is too hard to believe. I’d really like to see it happen, right before my eyes. Then I’d believe.”

She laughed, clear and musically. “A month or so ago, our preacher talked about the people wanting a sign from Jesus. He was healing people right and left, and they couldn’t believe unless he did a specific miracle, just for them. Then they would believe, so they said.

“You’re just like them. I’m a walking miracle, but unless you can see just this one thing, you can’t believe.”

He cringed at her assessment of him, but she was right. The isotopes, the trances, the red skin when she was hot—all of those could be an elaborate scam. Listening to radio in her head, the healing, that was just hearsay.

In his heart, he didn’t believe she was capable of trying to fool him, but he had been fooled so completely by his father. I don’t trust my heart. I have to use my eyes.

“Well, are you going to pull a Jesus on me?”

Deena flushed and looked away. After a minute, she asked.

“What would this experiment be?”

“I would make a very small cut on your arm, very small, it wouldn’t hurt much at all. Then the nanobots would close up the wound and we could see what they do, and how fast.”

She winced. “I don’t like sharp things.”

“So you refuse?”

Deena crossed her arms. “I’m getting really tired of being a test subject, but okay, I’ll do it.”

Luther found the first exit and pulled off into a parking lot. He reached down under the seat.

“What are you doing?”

He pulled out a white plastic box. “First aid kit.”

Inside, among the bandages and ointments was a razor blade. She pulled away.

He explained. “It’s very sharp. A cut with a sharp blade doesn’t tear, and it doesn’t hurt as much.”

She couldn’t look away from the blade. She was frightened.

He didn’t try to rush her. “Look. I’ll do it on me first.” Carefully, he found a spot on his forearm far from any major blood vessels. With a quick slice, he made a one-inch long mark on his skin. Blood started oozing up. Hurriedly, he set the blade down and reached for an alcohol-soaked pad.

“Here, let me do that.” She took his wrist in one hand and cleaned the wound.

“How does it feel?” she asked.

“It stings a little, especially from the alcohol. Maybe a little, very little, ache.”

She applied ointment and chose a bandage strip that would match the size of the cut.

“There, you’re done.”

He flexed his arm. “Fine. No pain at all.”

The smile had come back to her face.

“Are you ready for your turn?”

“Oh, I guess. But sterilize the blade first.”

“Of course.” He unwrapped another of the alcohol pads and wiped down the razor blade.

She giggled.

“What?”

“Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, sterilizing the pin before they swore their blood oath.”

He remembered the scene from the old book. “AIDS sort of put a damper on blood-brotherhood, didn’t it.”

“Things change.” She took a deep breath and held out her arm.

He gently held it and ran his finger over the skin to find the right place to make the cut. He could feel every shiver as she fought to pull her arm back.

Picking up the blade, he said, “You can close your eyes if you want.” She shook her head and stared in tight-lipped horror at the blade in his hand.

Swish. He moved the razor, but something was wrong.

Deena said, “You missed.”

“No, I didn’t.” He ran his finger over her skin at the place where the blade had stopped. There was no cut.

Cautiously, he moved the blade again, slowly. The sharp corner touched her skin, but would not go in. He pushed a little harder. It was like trying to cut a sheet of glass.

He dropped the blade and felt the spot with his index finger. Massaging the skin, he could feel a hard plate, just at the skin level. She was armored!

Otherwise, the skin was perfectly normal, soft and warm. As he probed, the hard plate shrank away, leaving no sign that there had ever been anything wrong.

Deena was looking into his eyes, trying to read what he was thinking. He held her arm, as soft and warm, as normal a girl’s arm as there ever was.

“It didn’t hurt,” she whispered.

He just held her arm, and stared at her face.

“You’re right. Your hair is growing longer.”

She blushed, and then gently removed her arm from his hand.

...

They followed the traffic onto the Golden Gate Bridge.

Deena looked out his window and then hers, trying to take in as much of the white stone city and the blue bay as she could.

“That’s Alcatraz Island over there,” he pointed out his window.

“I wish we had time to see the sights. Mom and I never went anywhere, at least the past few years.”

“Maybe we’ll come back some time.” He said, before he recalled his intention to part company with her once they made their ‘rescue attempt’ in Malibu.

Every mile we go is more dangerous for her. I wish I could talk her out of it.

He automatically followed the Highway 101 signs. Probably IH-5 would get him to Malibu quicker, but he didn’t want to dig out his maps, not in this traffic.

What he wanted to do was to talk about her nanobots. But she had withdrawn and didn’t seem to want to talk at all.

Did she see what I did? The tough skin didn’t seem to surprise her any.

Deena watched the city roll by slowly. After a few miles of watching the bay, she raised her head. Pointing off to the west, she said, “Go that way.”

By that time, the 101 had turned back into a limited access highway. Luther noted the IH-280 exit and moved to the correct lane.

With every evidence of anticipation all over her face, she watched the road signs. “That way.” She pointed. South on IH-280.

She’ll explain it soon enough. Or else he would start pestering her about it. San Francisco wasn’t one of the places he knew by heart. She said she hadn’t gone anywhere, but maybe she knew of a place from TV or the Internet.

He hurried to shift lanes as she directed them to Highway 1, and then 35. There was a bank of fog rolling in from the ocean. He caught a whiff of cool salt air through the vent. From sunlight to shade happened quickly.

The road quickly curved over to follow a long straight lake. It was deeply blue with high hills on both sides.

Deena pointed to a gateway in the fence. “Stop here.”

He pulled off the shoulder. She was out and through the gateway before he could ask what she meant.

There was a sign. “SECURE YOUR VEHICLE AND LOCK ALL YOUR VALUABLES IN YOUR TRUNK. SAN BRUNO PD.”

He looked around. His valuables were already in the trunk, but he put a few things out of sight and locked the doors.

An elderly man with a dog was coming out of the gate.

“What’s this place?” Luther asked.

“San Andreas Lake, and the hiking trail.”

“You mean like the fault line?”

“Yeah. The fault formed this place.”

Luther was intrigued. He had heard about the San Andreas fault all his life. So, this was it, or part of it. He was willing to take a closer look.

The sun was setting, off to the west, but there was still plenty of light. He looked down the trail.

“Deena?” She was nowhere to be seen.

...

She stood at the gates of the Dark Castle. Black lightning struck all around her. In her hand, she held a steel gray broadsword longer than she was tall.

The Voice cried out, and although it wasn’t for her ears to hear, or her mind to comprehend, she knew what she had to do.

The ground beneath her shivered with each step, and she knew that this was no ordinary rock which formed the foundations of the Dark Castle.

It was a sleeping dragon.

Taking the broadsword in both hands, she stabbed it deeply into the dragon’s heart.

...

Deena was down the water’s edge. Luther called to her, but she didn’t react.

Oh, no. She’s off in a trance again. He hurriedly followed her path.

She faced the water and raised her arms.

Luther saw it happen. For an instant, it was incomprehensible. Dark patches forming all over her skin.

Then they started dripping off of her.

No! She’s bleeding to death!

He exploded into a run and closed the gap between them.

It’s not blood. In the fading light of the day, the thick substance had looked like blood, but closer, he could see it was gray.

She swayed, and then collapsed. He rushed to grab her, fearful of touching the nanobot goo.

But the droplets ran quickly to the ground and vanished into the soil. Not a hint of their passage was left.

Deena blinked her eyes. “Luther?”

He eased her gently to the ground. Her head lolled to the side.

“Oh, Luther, I’m so tired!”

“Just take a moment. It’s okay. Just rest.”

She closed her eyes, and then opened them again with a horrified expression on her face.

“Oh Luther! The voices are gone. The radio voices in my head! I can’t hear them anymore.”

At first, he thought she was choking, but the sound coming from her throat was a wail of despair.

She reached for him, and collapsed tearfully into his arms.

Extreme Makeover - Part 25 of 42

2012-02-27T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 25: Hair

The afternoon sun highlighted Deena’s hair. Luther tried to ignore it. She didn’t understand his feelings about the gold coins.

He was in a fight for his life. The other side had money and power, and the sleepless persistence of an organization. He was one person, and for two years the only thing that let him keep nimble and ahead of those who wanted him dead was his ability to turn gold into cash.

Money bought food and gas. Ready cash meant not having to get a job, a bank account—a routine.

Deena was just a naive kid, still wanting to play by school playground rules.

Her hair caught his attention again. Something wasn’t right.

Blushing, she asked. “What are you looking at?”

“Something’s different about your hair.”

She pulled down the sun visor, which in her family car had a mirror clipped to it. But not so on the Chevy.

Deena grabbed his center-mounted rear-view mirror, and before he could protest, twisted it around so she could see herself.

“Eeek!”

Luther twisted his head around, trying to check the traffic behind him. He moved to the right hand lane, grabbing the mirror back from her, straitening it back to where it was supposed to be.

“Don’t do that!” He looked for a place to pull over.

Deena was frantically looking for another mirror, tugging at her hair.

Finding a wide shoulder, he pulled to a stop.

“All right! What’s the problem?”

“Look! She tugged at her hair. Her brown hair was growing out blonde. Slightly less than an inch was the new color.

“Hmm,” he said. “I’ve heard of blonde’s hair growing dark at the roots, but this is the first I’ve heard it the other way around.”

Deena leaned over into his half of the seat, so she could see herself in the mirror.

“That’s because their blonde hair wasn’t their natural color. If they went too long without fresh coloring, their natural color grew back out.

“But I’m naturally brown haired. This is impossible.”

He laughed. “That’s my line.” He gently pushed her back to her side of the car. Not that having her in his lap was unpleasant, but he couldn’t drive that way.

“So, this isn’t a catastrophe? Not something worth crashing the car over?” he asked pointedly.

“Okay! I’ll leave your mirror alone. It’s just...startling.”

“But all you have to do is get some brown hair coloring and rinse it back to normal then?”

“Oh, no! I’ve wanted to be a blonde for years. I’m going with it! Let’s get to a store. I need a comb, scissors and a mirror.”

...

An hour later, Luther stood behind her at a picnic table in a city park. He grabbed some of her hair with the comb, following her detailed instructions. Pulling it out until the color changed, he snipped off the brown, leaving the lighter colored hair beneath.

“Let me look.”

They had two hand mirrors, so she could see behind her. “Take just a little more off here.” She fingered a tuft that was still brown tipped.

Snip. “That ought to do it. But don’t gripe about the cut. This is not my thing.”

He thought she looked a little punkish, with her head sheared so close, but she wanted all the brown gone.

His hand rested on her shoulder, marveling at how excited she was over a simple color change.

“Don’t you think I look like Bryony now?”

He didn’t see it. “Not until you lose about fifty IQ points.”

She slapped at his hand. “Bryony isn’t stupid at all. She’s very perceptive when it comes to people.”

Luther put his hands in his pocket. Deena combed at her new hairstyle.

“I’ll grant you she has great social instincts. But you—I can talk to you.”

...

Deena said, “It’s growing.”

They were getting closer to San Francisco, traveling the highway through hilly grasslands. The forest was long gone, except for a few protected stands deep in the ravines. The traffic was demanding more of his attention and he had to keep his eyes on the road. “What’s growing?”

“My hair. It’s longer now.”

“In just one hour? It has to be an illusion.”

“No. I thought so too, but I’ve been watching it.” She set aside the mirror.

He gave her a few, one-second examinations. It looked longer to him as well.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “The weirdness all started when that tree fell on me.”

“Tell me about it.”

She tried to put her mind back to that day.

“I was having a hard time keeping up with you guys.” She told about her shortness of breath and how the lightning flashed and the tree came down on her.

“I think the healing started right away after that. I had horrible bruises and bad pain in my back that first night, but they went away very quickly.”

“Okay,” he said, “then go back to the tree fall itself. Tell me every little thing about it.”

When she got to the tree sap, he stopped her.

“What tree sap? I don’t ever remember redwood tree sap. What was it like?”

“Well it came in droplets. Thick ones. I thought for sure it would stick and stain my skin and raincoat, but it seemed to melt away. I looked for signs of it later, but there were none.”

“Color? Smell?”

“No smell, that’s strange isn’t it? Redwood is so aromatic. It was gray. A thick sort of gray-goo.”

The Chevy swerved as he brought it back into his lane.

“Luther? What’s wrong?”

...

He found a drive-in where they could order burgers for Deena’s insatiable appetite and where he could think. These were particularly greasy. She devoured hers.

Luther stared vacantly out the windshield as he tried to remember.

“I had a theory you were psychic. Everyone from Charles Forte to Steven King tell stories about girls who manifest strange talents after an injury.”

Deena shrugged. “I could live with being psychic.”

He shook his head. “Now I think it’s something else.”

“What?”

His forehead was wrinkled. “I’m trying to remember the title of the book. I read a lot of books on the road. Libraries were a comfortable place to relax out of sight.

“One of them was about nanotechnology.

“I’ve heard the word,” she said, popping a french fry into her mouth.

“It’s about building very small machines. Some of them could be so small that they could work inside living cells.”

She stopped still. “You mean, like going inside hair cells and turning off the pigmentation?”

“Right! Or locating damaged cells and repairing them. Muscles could be restructured for greater efficiency. Blood could be routed closer to the skin for greater cooling.”

Deena ate another fry. She stared off at nothing in particular. “Machines need energy. I had a lot of useless fat.”

Luther tapped the dashboard for emphasis. “And, these machines would need lots of trace elements to build more of themselves as they were needed.”

“The zinc?”

“Why not? Think Legos, only very tiny ones made of atoms instead of plastic bricks.

“A particularly sophisticated version might need one isotope over another. Working down at the atomic levels, a machine like that could easily sense which elements were which. They would have to, to manipulate them.”

Deena asked, “So, you’re saying that I’ve been invaded by an army of little machines that is changing my body?”

“I’m not saying anything. It’s too fantastic. But it’s the best theory yet. It explains so much.”

She tried to visualize it—zillions of tiny machines in her blood and throughout her cells, making changes. She shivered.

“Now in this book, there was a doomsday warning.”

She paused over the next fry. “Now you tell me!”

“Listen up, Blondie. The idea was that these machines, these ‘assemblers’ could get out of whack and start doing nothing but make more copies of themselves.

“With enough available energy and raw materials from the environment, these runaway assemblers could turn the whole planet—rock, forest, people—into gooey mass of themselves. It’s called the ‘gray goo’ problem.”

Deena put her words together carefully. “So, you think I could turn into a blob of these ‘assemblers’ and destroy the world?”

He shook his head. “No, I don’t. What’s happening to you is too controlled, too precise. If you are infected with these nano-robots, then they are taking a great deal of care to protect your health.

“But just think. That great old redwood could have been infected. When the lightning struck, the nanobots bailed out in mass and rained down on you as your ‘tree sap’? They soaked into your skin and set up housekeeping.

“They trimmed the fat, made you sensitive to trace elements, and improved your body. Perhaps they’ve even activated a telepathic sense. Maybe that’s what they use to communicate with each other.”

Deena nodded. “That’s why I kept going back to that grove in the redwoods. Old home week. They wanted to talk to their family.”

“They are also communicating with you.”

“Me?”

“Sure. How else did they make you sleepwalk, or how else did they know you wanted blonde hair?”

“Well, they’re not very talkative.”

“Maybe you’re just not listening.”

She sipped on her chocolate malt. “I’m not listening to you anymore. I’ve got to think about this.”

“Good enough. It’s just a theory anyway. Without a powerful microscope, we have no way of knowing for sure.” He disposed of the trash and pulled back out on the highway.

...

“It’s not telepathy,” she said a couple of minutes later.

“What?”

“They don’t use telepathy. Telepathy is used by living things; it is not bound by time and space. The nanobots use radio.”

The car slowed as Luther let pressure off the gas pedal. “So you think it is nanobots? How do you know this? And how do you know about the telepathy?”

Deena shrugged. “I just know it. It’s like the isotopes, or the calculations. I’m certain your nanobot idea is more than just a theory.”

She shook her head. “It’s strange. Now that I know what to call them, it all makes perfect sense. It’s like listening to a foreign language. Once you get the vocabulary words, a bunch of noise becomes sentences.

“I’m infected by nanobots. How strange.”

Luther was trying to put the pieces together himself.

“Radio? You are sensitive to radio?”

“Yes, but I knew that part already. It was the telepathy bit that just popped into my head.”

Luther was having trouble driving, and coping with the new information at the same time.

“Slow down. Calculations? Radio? Start from the beginning and tell me everything.”

Deena explained the instant calculator gift. He quizzed her with a few factorials.

“1,307,674,368,000, but that’s the last one!” She looked irritated. “Don’t think you can push my buttons just for entertainment.”

“Well, you can answer fast, but without a calculator, I can’t check your answers, but let’s just assume it works. Information flows pretty efficiently between you and the nanobots. At least numbers and math concepts. I’d guess machines would have no problems with those.

“What about the radio?”

She shook her head at the memory.

“Voices in your head can be scary.”

“You can just listen to radio, directly?”

“Yes, although I’ve gotten pretty good at tuning it out. It about drove me crazy.”

A piece of the puzzle dropped into place. He snapped his finger. “So you listened in on my cell phone calls!”

“Yes, only your side, though.” Defensively, she added, “I didn’t have any choice, at first. The signals came blasting in on me.”

Luther was greatly relieved. Biological radio he could handle, but having Deena able to read his mind was too uncomfortable. He had been feeling like he had to keep his every thought under control. He was free again.

But there was something odd.

“Wait a minute! When did you ask them about the telepathy?”

She shook her head, “I didn’t really. You mentioned telepathy back at the drive-in. I thought about it then.”

“And then you got your answer a couple of minutes later. Do you know what that means?”

She shook her head.

Luther kept his eyes on the road, but in his mind, they were far away.

“If the nanobots use radio to talk to each other, then your question went off to them at the speed of light. It took them two minutes to answer. Two minutes is too close for another planet, but way too far away for any place on Earth.”

Deena absorbed the idea.

“A spaceship? You mean they really are aliens? Alien machines inside me?”

“Don’t ask me. You’re the one they talk to.”

She was quiet for a little bit. “They’re not talking. But then, they never do.”

Extreme Makeover - Part 24 of 42

2012-02-24T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 24: Calls

Mara Brooke rushed to the door. “Yes?”

A large man in a black suit opened his wallet to show a government ID. “Thompson, FBI. This is Boyer.” The other man nodded, stone-faced. “Can we talk?”

She let them in. Her only question spilled out of her. “Is it Deena? Have you heard anything?”

“Your daughter, Ma’am?” he asked.

“Yes. She’s been gone a whole day now! That Jennings boy took her away.”

He pulled out a photo. “Do you recognize this person?”

Mara nodded. “That’s him. Younger, but that’s Luther Jennings.”

“I’m afraid not, Mrs. Brooke. This is Luke Haskell. His father, a contract worker at a Nevada military base, is suspected of removing classified documents. The FBI is attempting to locate the boy. We believe he might still have them in his possession. Any help you might give us would be greatly appreciated.”

Mara babbled on, protesting Deena’s innocence and detailing her deepest fears about the untrustworthy boy, and his deceitful aunt. With little prompting, she gave a detailed replay of her visit to Katy Ferril’s house.

“But no one can find either of them. I’m afraid it’s a kidnapping plot to steal away my Deena.”

He nodded. “Do you have a recent photo of your daughter?”

“Oh yes.” She jumped up and returned with the senior class photo proofs she had never returned. He took one and peered at the image of the timid, hunched over, fat girl. His expressionless eyes made no judgment, but he memorized the hair, eyes, and face.

“May I keep this? I’ll return it when our investigation is done.”

...

Deena ate two burgers. Luther had trouble working through one of them.

He’s upset about his parents. She thought of her own mother.

“Luther?”

He looked up from his fries.

“I need to make a phone call. I promised to call my Mom. She’s probably worried sick about me.

“Could I use your phone?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have it. It’s back in Crescent City.”

“Oh, no. It isn’t. You’d dropped it at school. I picked it up. It’s in the car.”

He sat straight upright. “What! Oh no.”

Grabbing her arm, he pulled her outside. “Show me the phone!”

“Okay.” She jerked loose from his grip. “Don’t get so huffy!” She rummaged through the back seat. His tidy packing had become tumbled by her repeated dressing back there.

“Here it is. Good as new.” She handed it over.

He took one glance at the blank screen and then unclipped the battery. “Do you know if it was turned on?”

“No, I don’t. Why?”

He looked at the phone in one hand and its battery in the other.

His voice was tense. He explained, every word hard and clear. “Because a cell phone can be tracked, just by being turned on! Every cell tower talks to every phone in range. The system has to know which tower is closest to each phone, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to complete the call.

“Somewhere in the phone company computers, a log of all these connections is kept. Someone with a court order, or a bribe, can locate any active phone.

“I dropped this in the grass on purpose, the instant I knew I had to get out of town. I didn’t want to be tracked.”

Deena could see him holding in his anger.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “So they know where we are?”

He held up the battery. “If the phone was on, they can know we headed south. At least until the battery went dead. If it was turned off, then we are still safe.”

She frowned. “Can’t you just.... Oh. No, you can’t just turn it on to see if the battery is still charged. That would give them a signal, wouldn’t it?”

Luther nodded. “But it was off. They won’t know how far we’ve come.”

He tossed the phone and its battery back into the car.

Deena asked, cautiously, “I still need to call Mom. I promised. There’s a pay phone over there.”

He shook his head. “Your mother’s phone bill would have its number. A reverse-lookup would give them this exact location.

She understood the problem. “Then I can’t ever call her? I wish I hadn’t said anything, then.”

He watched her for a moment. She felt like a bug under a microscope. What could he be thinking?

His shoulders sagged. “You made a promise. There may be a way. But we’ll need to get to a bigger city to make it happen. Come on.”

...

The dog scratched at the door again. Katy sat up on her bed when she heard the sound of a key in the lock.

The black beast pushed the door open and rushed her, mouth open. She jumped up on her bed, but he got his teeth on her arm.

“Ruben!”

For just an instant, she felt the agony as his jaws tightened and his teeth sank deeper into her flesh. Then the dog obeyed and released her. Blood and pain oozed from her arm.

Leo Dryer patted his pet’s head and handed him a treat.

“Here.” He tossed her a towel. “Better stop that bleeding before it gets all over everything.”

Katy dabbed and wrapped the gashed arm. It burned from the laceration. She cried from the pain.

Leo pulled up a chair and sat comfortably while she worked. Ruben, the dog, sat quietly by his side.

“So, you have been helping the Haskell boy in Crescent City, have you? Mr. Benedict wouldn’t be pleased to hear of such disloyalty in one of his former employees.”

Through clenched teeth, chattering from shock, she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, don’t play games. Thompson has called this morning. He told me all about your little visit with Mrs. Brooke and her daughter—Deena is it?

“The sooner you tell me where he is, the less likely Thompson will have to...question...your new friends.”

...

Boyer monitored the radio scanner while Thompson scanned the schoolyard with binoculars. He checked one blonde teenage girl after another, trying to match what he was seeing with the photo they had gotten after doing an Internet search on “Bryony Sawyer”.

Thompson’s FBI credentials were good enough to bluff an old lady, but he didn’t want to risk them going through the school’s office staff. Educators were more paranoid about risks to children these days.

He needed to get the Sawyer girl alone.

Boyer sat up straight in the car and started the engine. “Our tap is hot. A call’s coming into the Brooke phone. It’s from the 801 area code—Utah.”

Thompson put down his glasses and buckled his seatbelt. The girl would just have to wait.

...

Deena heard her mother’s voice through the noisy connection. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mom. It’s me. I’m fine.”

“Deena! Where are you? I’ve been worried sick.”

“I can’t tell you, Mom. I just wanted to call and tell you everything is fine.”

“You get home right this instant! If that boy....”

“Mom, I’ll be a few days. Luther has been a perfect gentleman.”

Across the table at the coffee shop, Luther was counting down seconds on his fingers.

“He can’t be trusted. People were here....”

“Mom, you raised me to be a good girl. Trust that you did a good job! Don’t worry. I love you. Bye.”

She set down the phone. Luther tapped a key on his laptop computer.

“Was that okay?”

He nodded. “Short, no details. It was fine.”

Deena sipped on her bitter coffee. “The call was real noisy, but it worked.”

“I’m surprised it worked at all. Voice-over-IP needs consistent bandwidth to keep the audio from breaking up. I’ve used these Free Internet hotspots before, and the network quality is erratic. At least you don’t have to use your credit card to get a connection.

“As long as I’ve got the setup working, I should probably try to call Katy.”

He made the connection to the anonymizing proxy in Poland. From there, he activated the VoIP software and picked up the phone he had plugged into his laptop’s adapter. He dialed the Malibu number and a computer system in Utah connected his Internet signal to the telephone network.

“Yeah?” A man’s voice answered.

Luther hung up immediately.

Deena looked puzzled.

“She’s not at home.” He looked grim.

...

Deena took his hand and squeezed it. Luther came out of his dark thoughts and began packing up the laptop and the VoIP interface box.

“You’re worried about her.”

He nodded. “My brain knew she was in deep trouble, but somehow I hoped.... I felt like she had eluded Thompson and was just waiting it out.

“I guess I was wrong.”

Deena asked, “Who is this Thompson?”

“Muscle for Leo Drye, who in turn is under Angelo Benedict. Dad was part of that organization, somehow, and they killed him.”

“And now they have Katy?”

He nodded.

“What do they want? What’s so important to them?”

Luther picked up his gear and said, “Come with me.”

In the parking lot, he opened the trunk and put away his computer gear.

“Look here.” He slid one box off of another and opened the lower one a few inches.

Deena looked in. There were stacks and stacks of little plastic trays. Each contained several gold coins.

Luther gave her a good look, then closed the box and stacked the other items on top of it.

“How much?” Deena asked.

“Let’s get moving first.”

...

“When I first counted it, I thought two million dollars in gold was the reason Benedict’s men killed my father. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Why?”

They were moving slowly in city traffic. A few hours to the south was San Francisco and they were in one long chain of urban development along the highway.

“Because two million dollars is nothing to a man like Benedict. Perhaps it was his private coin collection and he was personally offended, but I don’t really buy that. There aren’t any really rare coins in there. It’s just typical bullion coins. He probably had that as a little insurance policy. It’s the only handy way to carry untraceable money around.”

“Why untraceable?”

“Gold is gold. There aren’t any serial numbers on coins like there are on paper currency, and there are gold dealers all over the world who will give you the current going price, no questions asked. For a man like Benedict, who probably has his own private plane and doesn’t have to deal with airport security guards, it would be a way to move value around freely, without banks making a record of it.”

“You could give it back to him.”

Luther shook his head. “No. Never! He killed my parents.”

“Not even to buy your own safety, or Katy’s freedom?”

Luther clenched his teeth. “No. Deena you don’t know these people. They don’t think like you do. They kill people. Why would they honor any trade deal with me? They would take the money and then ‘tidy up the loose ends’. That’s you and me.

“No deals with Benedict or any of his goons.”

Extreme Makeover - Part 23 of 42

2012-02-22T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 23: Chase

Katy Ferril startled awake in her prison room. It was black indoors, with only an orange beam from a security light entering from a two-inch ventilation window over the door. She clutched the thin covers, as if it could provide her with some protection.

There it was again, a scratching of claws against her door. The dog growled and scratched again.

I can’t stand the waiting!

Leo Drye had a deadly reputation when she worked in Las Vegas. People who crossed him simply vanished.

But before he went missing, Mark Haskell gave her the information that now filled her nightmares.

He had pointed out Thompson (no one used his first name) and two others who worked for Leo.

“Steer well clear of those butchers,” he had cautioned. “The police never find the victims because there isn’t enough of the bodies left to identify.”

Katy kept her tears silent, for fear of exciting the monster at her door.

She could well imagine what might happen to her body, once Leo Drye had wrung everything he could from her. She could feed his pet for a week.

Please God, just kill me now—and keep Luke safe from this madman!

...

Luther woke at first light. He stuffed the blanket in the back seat and stretched.

I had forgotten how stiff this made me. Sleeping in a real bed this past year had been paradise. Deena had better appreciate it.

But now, he urgently needed to relieve some pressure.

Let her sleep a little more. He could find some place private at this hour.

Other than a few birds announcing themselves to the world, the little one-road town was quiet as the forest that wrapped around it. He walked down the driveway and along the road, looking for a place to duck into the bushes.

It’s a nice town, but a little too small.

He would have to find a new place to live. Someplace nice and quiet would be good. But he would be an unknown there, and it might take too long for the locals to accept him. That had been one of the nice things about Crescent City. It had been large enough to hide a stranger.

When his father was killed, Katy should have vanished—taken her own advice. Her job was gone, of course, and it was made plain that the company didn’t trust her. She left, but she didn’t go far enough. Malibu and Las Vegas were just too close, culturally. The traffic between Los Angeles and Las Vegas was bumper to bumper on Interstate 15, and slowed to a crawl on weekends. The chances she would run into someone she had known was too high.

I wish there was something I could do. This ‘rescue’ is just a joke—something to keep Deena happy.

They would eventually get to Malibu, find her house deserted, and no one would know where she had gone.

Just like Mom and Dad. A tight bundle of old pain threatened to bubble to the surface, but he ruthlessly forced it back down.

He walked back to the motel and up to Deena’s room.

The door was open. He walked in.

“Deena?”

The bed was in disarray, with the covers half on the floor. Draped over the table were her slacks and on the back of the chair were her socks. She must have washed them and carefully hung them out to dry. Her slacks were clean, although dingy in places from the mud.

On the shower curtain rod, underwear dangled.

But where was Deena?

He ran to the door and looked around. No one was in sight. Hurriedly he checked the car, but there was no sign of her there either.

Deena is gone. So was his shirt.

If she were sleepwalking again, he had to find her fast, before the town woke up.

He quickly stripped the room of all her things, tossed them in the back of the car and headed north.

Every other time she had gone zombie, she had tried to get to that one redwood grove. But that’s nearly a hundred miles back. She’d never make it, not half-dressed and barefoot.

With each mile, his confidence dropped. Deena had said that she no longer felt an urge to go back there. Suppose she hadn’t been deluding herself.

When he reached the junction with the main highway, he pulled a U-turn and headed back, driving as fast as he could, searching the shoulders, looking for red-plaid.

By the time he was five miles south of the motel, he noticed a gas station, with a graybeard in overalls sitting on a rocker on the porch. I need gas.

He started the pump and walked over to the man.

“Hello. Have you seen anyone come by here, walking or running?”

“She belong to you?” The oldster coughed. “If she hadn’t been moving so fast, I’d have introduced myself. Nice legs.”

“Thanks!” Luther hurriedly topped off the tank and handed the man more of his stash of cash.

By the time he had gone a couple of more miles, he whispered, “Stupid!” I should have asked the guy how long ago she passed by.

Another five miles clicked off on the odometer. A delivery truck passed going the opposite direction. If he didn’t find her quickly, she would wake up facing some very interested strangers.

Confidence that she was just ahead faded. How fast is she running? She had claimed thirty to forty miles per hour, but she couldn’t maintain that rate, could she? If so, he’d never catch up to her, not on this twisty road.

White legs caught his eye before the rest of her came into focus. Not very tan.

He honked. She didn’t miss a beat, totally ignoring him. The Chevy crept up behind her. She was doing a constant twelve miles per hour.

At least she’s not bright red.

He followed for a few hundred yards, then pulled ahead of her and stopped the car.

Like a soccer goalie, he braced himself to stop her charge.

Deena’s gray eyes were open, but her face held no expression. She ran straight towards him, then at the last moment, swerved to avoid an impact.

But he was ready. He snagged her arm and swung her around. They both went down, tumbling on the pavement.

She screamed, rolling to the grassy shoulder.

“Deena!” He crawled on hands and knees over to where she was frantically trying to stretch his shirt farther than the fabric allowed.

“I did it again!” she wailed.

“It’s okay. Come on. I’ve got your clothes in the car.”

Hesitantly, she gave him her hand. He pulled her up and led her to the car.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she grumbled, crawling into the back seat.

“You were decent enough. I didn’t see anything.” Much.

The old guy had been right. Deena had really great legs. All the way up.

...

“Don’t put your shoes on yet,” he cautioned. “You’ve run about fifteen miles this morning in bare feet. I’ve got to check them out for cuts and blisters.”

“It’s okay.” She said quietly from the back seat as she dressed under the blanket.

“Don’t argue!” He was a little tired of how bossy she had gotten. Once she got the moral higher ground over rescuing Katy, he’d let her run all over him.

A minute later, she opened the door and poked her bare feet out. She had her arms crossed tightly across her chest. With a sullen expression on her face, she said, “I’m never going to get undressed for bed ever again.”

He took first one foot and then the other, checking for dirt and cuts and blisters. While they were dirty, the thick callus was perfect.

“I don’t understand how you made that run without shredding your feet. There were places where the pavement was nothing but sharp gravel.”

Something about her reaction made him suspicious.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“I heal fast.”

“How fast?”

“You remember my cut hand?”

He nodded.

“That healed with no scar within the hour. Other scrapes I’ve had don’t last long either.”

Luther brushed the most of the dirt free from her foot and said, “Put your shoes on.”

Each revelation upset him a little. He had learned the strange rules of his survival, but it appeared that hers was in a different class altogether.

She reached for her socks. “I’m scared.”

He sat down in the grass. “My problems or yours?”

An old Cadillac passed by, the driver gave them a wave.

She said, “Mine. I don’t even know what yours are.”

He got to his feet. “Let’s get moving. I’ll tell you everything on the road.”

...

“Dad was some kind of an accountant. I don’t know exactly what he did for the casino, but it must have paid fairly well. We had a nice home. Dad always dressed well. Mom spent a fortune on her gardens, and I don’t ever remember a fuss over the cost.

“That about defined us. Dad liked the glitter of Vegas. Mom liked her flowers.

“I didn’t like anything.”

Luther didn’t look her way. He glared at the road.

“Luke Haskell was a self-absorbed little brat. Oh, he was smart enough, but he was blind to what was going on around him.

“For his sixteenth birthday, Dad gave him ... me, this car. I accused him of getting it for himself when he borrowed it a few times.” He looked like he had eaten something sour. “I wanted something sleek and modern.

“Anyway, we weren’t a happy family.

“Dad started getting nervous. I can remember some fights between him and Mom. I didn’t pay any attention.

“Finally, he planned a trip to Grand Cayman for the three of us. Of course, he hadn’t checked with Mom or me about it. Mom had some garden club event that conflicted. My buddies had planned a day trip to Death Valley—something like that thing we did to the Redwoods.

“It was nothing important, but it was enough. I had been to the Caribbean before. Nice place, but I was too old for family vacations. I threw a tantrum. Dad tried to be firm, and I think he believed I had given in.

“But on trip day, I skipped out early, and joined my friends.”

Luther drove in silence for a bit. Deena didn’t interrupt, only shifting in her seat to show that she hadn’t lost interest.

“I guess I thought they would go on without me. Or maybe I didn’t think it through at all. I don’t know. I don’t really remember.

“When my buddy Duke dropped me off, it was past midnight, and the house was dark. Everything had gone like I planned, I thought. Then I noticed that the front door wasn’t locked. Mom always locked the door.”

He began to whisper, intensely. “Inside, I found their luggage. Someone had tossed the clothes aside and ripped apart the seams. The bedrooms, the living room, every room had been trashed. Inside the garage, my Dad’s BMW and Mom’s Cooper were still parked, but the cushions were ripped open.

“My parents were missing. Just missing.”

“I was getting up the nerve to call the police when the phone rang.

“It was Katy. She was my Dad’s secretary—she had been for years. I knew her well. She was like...well, she was like an aunt. She gave me birthday presents and chatted when I tried to call Dad at his office.

“I told her what had happened. She told me to get out—to vanish.

“Dad had stolen something from work. And those people didn’t rely on the police to handle theft.”

Luther took a deep breath, shaking his head to clear old memories. “So I vanished. My car was a few blocks away where I’d left it that morning. They hadn’t found it. There was only one thing out of place.”

He picked up the GPS unit on the dash. “This thing.”

“It was Dad’s. It’s a Global Positioning System navigator. It uses satellites to tell you exactly where you are on the little map.” He let her see. It marked their position on SR 254, ‘Avenue of the Giants’. She could see Highway 101 less than a mile away on a parallel heading.

“You see this dashed line? That’s where we’ve been. It’s called a breadcrumb trail. The last hundred or so miles we’ve been is marked. It lets you retrace your path.

“Well, that morning, waiting for dawn, I could see where my Dad had gone the night before. He had borrowed my car and gone out into the desert and returned to the house. I found out how to make the gadget memorize the bread-crumb trail and after hiding out for a couple of days while the news media covered the strange disappearance of all three of us, I followed it.”

Deena couldn’t help herself. “What did you find?”

He hesitated. She guessed, “Oh! Gold coins?”

A nod. “Dad was a crook, I guess. Where he got them, I don’t know. When he was discovered, he tried to get his family to safety. He must have planned to get us all to Grand Cayman and then off to someplace where his boss, Angelo Benedict, couldn’t find us. But when I vanished, I messed that all up.”

His voice was even. But even though he had been through the story so many times that the sting was dulled, Deena could sense the deep guilt that he felt, and the anger.

“They caught Mom and Dad, and they killed them. Now they’re chasing me. They’ll hunt me forever.”

Extreme Makeover - Part 22 of 42

2012-02-20T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 22: Meeting

The sky overhead swirled with pale blue cold fire. She stood on the windswept plain, side by side with the other Chosen.

“The Earth shakes there,” whispered the warrior to her left. “The very air is poison,” nodded the one to her right.

“Demons appear from nowhere to crush your bones.”

“The stones open their mouths and cry out in pain.”

A frail voice whispered, “None are able to approach the Dark Castle.”

A slow, determined voice below her feet added, “All who have tried, have died.”

She wept, feeling the despair of those around her.

And then the Voice spoke, so powerful and deep, as broad as the air, as high as the sky. The Voice spoke and none could understand.

“What did the Voice say?” she cried out.

A Chosen, so small that it came to rest on her ear, whispered, “i heard it.”

“What did it say, oh tiny Brother?”

“the voice asked, ‘who will go to the dark castle?’”

The Chosen wept as one, for there was no one able to approach the Dark Castle and live.

She breathed in the companionship of the Chosen and cried out, “I will go.”

No sooner had the shiver of rejoicing overcome the host than a watcher cried out, “An Other has come!”

Fear replaced the joy in an instant, for Others brought death.

“Go!” she cried. “Run away, go to the west. I will withstand the Other.”

...

Luther whispered, “Deena!”

She reacted. Lowering her arms and still moving as if she were in a dream, she pointed to the west.

As if they were all one herd, the elk and deer and smaller animals quickly moved off in the direction she pointed.

“Deena?” He ignored the animals and made his way across an ancient fallen log towards her.

She blinked, seeing him for the first time.

“Luther,” she smiled. “How...?”

Seeing they were deep in the forest stole away her words. Her face crashed.

“Where...? I was in the car...” She felt the scrap edge of her blouse. Frantically, she tugged at it, trying to make it cover her.

He approached and she flinched away.

“Deena, you fell out of a moving car. You are injured, I need to see how badly.”

Like a toddler, she hugged herself and said, “No.”

He pulled out the missing sleeve. “There’s blood on this. Now, I have to check you out.”

She shook her head. A faint wail was building up in her throat.

He grabbed her arm. Shaking her firmly, he said, “Stop that. We have to get you back to the car.”

He pulled her free of where she had been standing. Once she took the first step, it was easier, but nothing could free her grip on her ruined clothes.

When they reached the trail, she hesitated.

“Someone might see me!”

Luther sighed, but it at least sounded like levelheaded Deena was coming back. Whatever had happened to her had been traumatic.

“I’ll check it out.” He walked the trail to the next rise, and then called, “No one is here. Come on.”

She edged out and headed his direction. With her arms clutching her blouse, she walked with a waddle.

He led them back the way he had come. Heading for the official trailhead parking was too risky. When he saw the stick, he pointed the way. At the road, he went alone to recover the car while she hid.

“Get in,” he called, when he had driven back. She dashed out of the shadows and ducked into the back seat, covering her self with the blanket.

“That has to be uncomfortable back there.” There was nowhere to sit. She was piled on top of the luggage.

“Don’t look back!”

“Okay.”

He dug into his glove compartment and pulled out a pocket-sized Global Positioning System navigator. He turned the GPS on and hoped the satellite signal could penetrate down through the trees. He drove on to try to find a place to U-turn. “Look in the black airline bag. There’s a spare shirt in there you can use.”

She mumbled something he couldn’t understand. A quick glance in the rear view mirror showed frantic motion under the blanket. He grinned and shook his head.

By the time he passed the place where they had stopped, the GPS was active. He marked the position as a waypoint in its little database. A block appeared on the glowing green map.

...

When they rejoined the highway, she was dressed and came back to the front seat. There were tears in her eyes.

“Do you hurt?” he asked. “I still need to check you for cuts and scrapes.”

“I’m okay.”

“You don’t sound positive. We can’t let open wounds go untreated. They will get infected.”

She shook her head sadly. “You don’t understand.”

“Then tell me.”

She tried to brush the deeply muddied stain on her white slacks. “This was the first nice outfit I’ve had in years! It’s ruined! In one day—less than a day. Ruined.”

He silently relaxed a bit. He would have laughed, but she might take it wrong.

“I have nothing to wear, except this...tent.” The red plaid shirt drooped on her shoulders and, untucked, extended halfway down her thigh. He didn’t comment that it was maybe too tight around her chest. She had it pinned strategically in the front.

“I think you look nice.”

She didn’t respond.

He put aside his worries about her injuries. She showed no pain. Nothing appeared to be still bleeding. If she was cut in an embarrassing place, he suspected she’d never let him near it.

“What’s wrong with me?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” He honestly had no idea which of her defects she was worried about, but he wasn’t to going phrase it that way.

“I have blackouts. I’ve had them for days. I sleepwalk, and now, twice, I’ve done it in the daytime.”

“You don’t remember anything about this last escapade?”

She shook her head. “No. One minute I was in the car, looking at the trees go by. The next, I was there in the forest, far from the road.”

“Then you don’t remember the animals?”

“What animals?”

He described what he had seen.

“You mean, I told them where to go, and they did it?”

He shook his head. “You pointed. You didn’t say anything.”

“That’s weird.” She shook her head and put her hand on her stomach. Her face looked pained.

“Are you getting sick?”

“No. I’m just extremely hungry.” She looked desperate. “Could we please stop somewhere to eat? Please?”

...

They stopped at an old diner in Orick where the locals came to eat. Deena ordered the largest steak they had, plus all the fixings.

“What do I call you?” she asked between bites. “Luther or Luke?”

He shrugged. “Stick with Luther. Your mother may want me publicly flogged, but the people searching for Luke....” He shook his head with bad memories.

She cleaned her plate, and the rest of his, and then begged a slice of pie. He paid the ticket without comment, but he took a quick tally of his available cash.

“Aren’t you afraid of gaining weight?” he asked.

Seriously, she shook her head, “No, I’m afraid of losing it. Do me a favor, will you?”

“What?”

“I don’t trust my own senses anymore. Tell me, I have lost a lot of weight, haven’t I?”

He nodded. “Um, yes. I’d say so. Unless you were wearing padded clothes this past year.”

“Okay, I want to know if it goes too far. If you see anything unhealthy about my weight—ribs showing, a gaunt face, stuff like that—tell me, please.”

“Okay, but right now, you look just fine.”

She flushed. “Don’t get any ideas. I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I just don’t trust this change.”

He nodded. “Sensible precaution.”

They walked out to the car.

He asked, “Which way are we headed?”

She nodded down the road, and frowned. “South, of course.”

“Just checking.”

“Why?”

He started the engine and pulled out on the road. “Just a theory. Over the past week, several weird things have happened back on that hiking trail. It could have been that you really just wanted to get back there, to that grove of trees. It was south of Crescent City after all.

“Are you sure you don’t feel a tug to go north now?”

Deena cleared her mind, trying to listen to those urgings.

“No. I still need to go south. We still need to rescue Katy.”

...

“I’m going to take this alternate route.” Luther said as he turned off of Highway 101.

Deena jerked awake. She had been dozing. Rubbing her eye, she said, “Okay. What’s up?”

“It’s dark and I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open. You don’t drive, do you?”

“No. Mom said the insurance was too expensive.”

“So I need to stop. I’ll find a place to pull over. This is a scenic route. There’ll be pullouts.”

“Oh.” She sounded distressed.

“What’s the problem?”

“It’s just...I’m filthy. My clothes are muddy. I stink of sweat so badly I can’t imagine how you stand to be in the same car with me.

“I was really looking forward to a shower, and a bed.”

He sighed. The other times he had been on the run, living from day to day in his car, he had subsisted on drive-thru hamburgers and sleeping in the back seat.

Traveling with Deena was a lot slower, and took a lot more money.

But, she did smell a little ripe.

“Okay. Be on the lookout for a place to stay.”

He saw dozens of great places to park the car out of sight of passing traffic, but most of the accommodations were abandoned 1950’s era tourist courts.

Finally, they located a motel built on the side of a hill. He carefully guided the Chevy up the narrow, twisted access road and went inside the office.

When he came back, he said, “We have a room. And in case anyone asks, your name is Jenny Anderson.”

“Who?”

“Jenny. Anderson. Even when you pay cash, you have to give them a name and the car’s license tag number. I transposed a couple of digits on the tag. That way it looks like an honest mistake if they catch me on it, and it still keeps the real number out of the databases.”

She frowned, “What’s your name?”

“Paul. Paul Anderson.”

“Jenny and Paul. Paul and Jenny.” She toyed with the sound of the names.

He drove over to their parking slot. He applied the emergency brake.

“Ah, Paul? How many beds?”

“Just one. It’s what they had.”

He opened the door. Under the dome light, she looked nervous.

“Are you coming?”

She hesitated. “Luther? I...”

“Hey, don’t get any ideas.” He relished being the one to say it. “I just need some sleep. I was planning to sleep in the car.” He patted the cushion.

“There’s just one key.” He tossed it to her. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She was out the door. “Thanks, Luther. I’m sorry I’m such a pest.”

He waited until she was in, then closed the doors and lowered the windows a couple of inches for ventilation.

His aching eyelids closed.

At the rate we’re going, we may never make it to Malibu.

Extreme Makeover - Part 21 of 42

2012-02-17T00:01:00.002-06:00

Chapter 21: Gathering

“Deena, be honest. What is the real reason you wanted to come along?”

She was startled. That was not the question she had expected.

“Hmm.” He had asked her to be honest. Did that mean he didn’t believe her? What does he think?

Oh! The hint of a blush crossed her face.

“Well, it’s not for your body! So, don’t get any ideas. We’re going to rescue Katy!”

“And?” He didn’t seem offended, at least. But he was still pushing for something more.

What am I doing here? Why did I need to come?

She couldn’t honestly say the rescue was the only reason. That’s what he asked, wasn’t it?

“Wait a minute. I need to think.”

Light and dark alternated as they got deeper in the tall tree forest. Luther kept his eyes on the road, and waited.

“My feet have been itchy lately,” she confessed. “I couldn’t sit still in school. I went outside to run between classes.”

“The red face.”

“Yes. Before physics class, I went outside, and before I realized it, I had gone over a mile. When I noticed the time, I ran back as fast as I could, and overheated.”

“Which direction did you go?”

She sighed, “South.”

He nodded. “You’re consistent. ‘Go south’, you kept saying.”

“And that’s the way we’re going, and I feel better because of it. No toe tapping, no itching to run.

“Luther, I don’t know why I had to come along, I honestly don’t know.”

...

Not good news. Luther tried not to let it disturb him. His whole life was one new layer of bad news after another. He just had to carry them—just let them build up around him.

Some day he would break out of this cocoon, but it didn’t have to be today. He could still be himself in spite of it all.

“Your mother seems a bit...possessive. How is she going to handle this?”

Deena shook her head. “Not well.

“Mom has no life. Not really. My Dad died in an airliner crash when I was little. What with his pension and the insurance and the airliner’s money, she hasn’t had to work for a living. She spends her day clipping coupons out of the newspaper and finding ways to avoid spending money.

“Well, you saw our car. She took an auto mechanics class—a free one—at the community college so she could change the oil herself. She’ll run it on bald tires until the cords show through, and then buy used ones to replace them. We keep it in the garage out of the salt air and one of my chores is to wash it off with the garden hose once a week. She never drives it fast, and she stays on the same, well-known roads.

“I’m like that old car, I think. She’ll keep me barely maintained, cleaned up and serviceable until I fall apart from rust and old age.”

He nodded. “You had to break out of your rut.”

She shrugged, “I guess.” Sadly, she stared out the side window away from him. “It’s scary, what I’ve done.”

“You can always back out.”

She shook her head at that.

He looked on down the road. “It’s a two day drive to Malibu. I know where Katy lives. We’ll scope the place out—see if she’s there, or if she’s left any messages. If she has indeed vanished, we’ll make an anonymous call to the police, to see if she’s with them. At the least, we can warn them that she’s been kidnapped and that she identified the person who was chasing her.

“One way or the other, we should be able to do something within a day or so of when we get there. After that, when there’s nothing more to do, I can put you on a bus headed back home, and I can vanish again.”

He looked to see how she was reacting.

Deena was gazing raptly up at the big trees all around them.

Click. Without warning, she opened the car door.

Luther jammed on his brakes, but she stepped out onto the moving pavement.

Horrified, he saw a tumbling mass of white on the road behind him in the rear view mirror.

...

The road was too narrow for a shoulder—and too twisty to just stop on the pavement. The next car would come over a hill and smash into it.

There! It was a small spot, but he pulled all the way up into the vegetation. His front bumper was against a giant tree and yet one set of tires were still half on the pavement.

It would have to do.

He slammed the door and started running back.

What happened? Did she suddenly snap? Change her mind and panic? Was she sick? What made her do that?

His mind raced, and he was terrified that she had injured herself badly. A skull fracture, and I’ll have to get her to a hospital.

Then it would be a race to get out of town and vanish. The police would be after him then. No doubt about it.

He slowed down. She had to have fallen near where he was standing.

If she can walk, she might have gotten off the road.

He walked slowly along the edge, looking for signs.

This feels very familiar. A broken patch of fungus caught his eye.

He pushed on through the gap. There were other signs of recent passage. A patch of white was visible through the trees. Where is she going?

The white was a scrap of cloth. He held it out. Girls’ fabric, part of a sleeve. Deena had been wearing white, but he hadn’t paid attention to the details.

On the torn edge, it was dark. Blood.

He felt another layer of bad news come down over him.

I have to take this with me. If the police were looking for Deena, and if they found a blood-stained piece of her clothing, there would be a state-wide manhunt in place in hours, complete with roadblocks and humorless men in uniform, holding guns. He stuffed the cloth into his pocket.

The trail led through the underbrush, until suddenly, there was the hiking trail. The ground looked undisturbed on the other side. She took this, but which way?

There were no fresh tracks. The trail was so beat down, it wouldn’t show them easily.

Is this the same trail we took on the field trip? They all looked alike. But if it was the same, then the tree fall was to the left. Could she be going back there for some reason?

It was the only theory he had. He marked the soil with a stick in the ground, in case he had to retrace his steps, then moved on as quickly as he could over the uneven ground.

He felt the presence behind him before he heard it. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a large bull elk bearing down on him.

One adrenalin boosted jump, and he was off the trail, ready to duck behind a large tree.

But the elk didn’t even look his way. Luther had been close enough to see scrapes and scars on the antlers. The animal moved purposefully down the trail.

Luther crept back. He had to have seen me. On a hunch he picked up the pace, following the elk.

...

After a quarter mile, the elk left the trail and angled off into a dark grove.

Luther was panting and dripping from sweat. The air was thick with moisture. He paused only for a couple of breaths, then followed.

A patch of white brought him up short. Through the trees, centered in a long thin ray of sunshine, Deena stood motionless, arms spread out, in the center of the grove.

He slowed, moving carefully through the undergrowth.

Deena is hot. He could see her red skin and that her clothes were plastered to her body with sweat. I need to get her to some water.

Suddenly, from the trees far overhead, a thin trickle of water splashed on her head. She gasped, but didn’t alter her position. The anointing stream cooled her quickly. In seconds, her skin faded back to normal and just as quickly, the water stopped.

He shivered, not because he was cold, but from this hint of forces he didn’t understand.

She’s in a trance. Deena wouldn’t stand like that. Her blouse was torn, and gaped open. The girl he knew would never let that happen. She would pin it shut, or hold it tight, fiercely protective of her modesty.

Like a spirit at one with nature, she seemed in rapture with the elements, oblivious to skin.

He took another step.

Shadows moved. As if his eyes were opened, Luther could suddenly see the others.

The elk he had been following turned to see him, as if for the first time. There were deer, other elk, and rabbits underfoot. The forest was alive with animals, all surrounding Deena, and until he had disturbed them, they had all been waiting motionless, patiently.

What have I stumbled into?