He was struck suddenly by a wrenching agony centered directly behind his forehead.
“Alex?”
“I’m okay,” he said, grimacing.
“No, you’re not. And we shouldn’t go to your house.”
He was massaging his temples now, features starting to relax. “Why?”
“Because they could still be there.”
“Who?”
Sam didn’t know what to say.
“Who, Sam, who?”
“Your mother,” Sam said, instead of answering, “she told me to get you, to run.”
“Run?”
“That’s what she wrote.”
“Wrote?”
“I … can’t explain now. You need to see for yourself.”
“Give me your phone. I should call the police.”
“No!” Sam blared, remembering. “Your mother said no police!”
“But I’m supposed to run. Like someone’s after me?”
“There were these … men,” Sam said, not bothering to elaborate further. “They were still at the house when I left. They could be waiting for you, probably are.”
“Then let’s go meet them.”
“What?”
“Drive, Sam, just drive.”
28
WHERE THE HEART IS
“PULL INTO THAT GAP in the trees by the road,” Alex ordered Sam, as they snailed down his street at the far end from his house.
He was out of the Beetle before Sam got it stopped all the way, looking through the trees at his house. The cars belonging to Alex’s mom and dad were neatly parked side by side in the driveway. The exterior lights were on, the drapes drawn across both the upstairs and downstairs windows. There were no broken windows or doors and no strange men hanging out on his front porch. The scene couldn’t have looked more normal. So maybe, just maybe …
“I know what I saw,” Sam insisted, as if reading his mind.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Pop the trunk.”
* * *
The Beetle’s “trunk” was actually in the front, under the proverbial hood with its engine in the rear.
“You have a spare tire?” he asked.
“Yes, sure, but … do I have a flat?”
“Pop the hood,” Alex told her.
* * *
They looped around to the rear of the house, Alex holding the old-fashioned tire iron tight by his side. The old Beetles came with a full-size spare and hardware that was ancient by modern standards, but very handy in this case. He noticed Sam was brandishing something too.
“Sam, what the hell?”
“It’s a taser.”
“Like I said, what the hell?”
“My parents insisted I carry it. I keep it in the car. For those drives back and forth to Ames at night. Makes them feel safer.”
“I’m glad somebody feels safe.”
Sam ground her sneakers to a halt in the tall grass Alex had neglected to mow. They reached the kitchen door, which opened onto the backyard, the room beyond dark as it would always be at this time of night. Alex eased the door inward, slowly enough not to draw the stubborn creak due to an oiling the brackets desperately needed that he’d forgotten to give them.
“Stay here,” he told Sam.
“No.”
“It wasn’t a request. If you hear … anything, run and get help.”
“I’ve already got you,” she said, not believing how lame it sounded.
He laid his strong hands on both her shoulders, Sam feeling the weight of the tire iron. “I’m going to check things out.”
“Alex—”
He lowered a hand to her lips, shushing her. “I’ll be right back.”
* * *
And he was, within moments, but they were the longest moments of Samantha’s life. She expected his expression to be bent in heartache, in misery, and was surprised he wasn’t sobbing audibly or hadn’t cried out when he saw the bodies of his parents on the living room floor. Instead, his expression was just blank and befuddled.
“You can come inside now,” Alex told her.
29
TO PROTECT AND SERVE
THEY PADDED SOFTLY TOWARD the opening leading from the kitchen into the living room, still nothing amiss or awry, which should’ve made them breathe easier, though it didn’t in Sam’s case. All the downstairs lights had been switched off, bathing the living room in darkness broken by a single lamp shining down from a table at the top of the stairs. Sam’s eyes adjusted quickly, still making nothing out until their next stop brought them across the threshold from the kitchen into the living room.
But the living room was empty. No bodies or blood. Everything in place just as it always was. An and Li Chin nowhere to be found.
“Sam?”
“I know what I saw,” she said, advancing ahead of him, stiff with shock. “Your father was lying here and your mother here. And right here, in this spot, is where your mother had written the message in blood.”
“Blood?”
“I didn’t tell you before. Your mom had written this message on the floor. Telling me to find you and run.”
“Where is it? Where are my parents?”
“I don’t know,” Sam managed.
“I checked upstairs. No sign of them there, either.” Alex hesitated, as fearful as he was uncertain. “You’re sure about what you saw?”
“Yes; well, no. I think I am, but I don’t know. I don’t know anything for sure anymore. Like what happened to my phone, those strange voices, that smell…”
“What smell?”
“I just remembered it. Like copper wire when it heats up. Something corrosive and…”
Sam stopped, trying to figure out how best to describe the scent that enveloped the man who’d stolen her iPad last night.
“What?” Alex coaxed.
“Nothing. I don’t know what the smell means. Maybe nothing. Maybe—”
Flashing lights appeared outside before Sam could continue, red and blue splashed against the living room walls from the black-and-white police cars that had parked nose to nose on the curb.
“I thought you said not to call the police,” Alex said uncertainly.
“I didn’t call them,” Sam insisted.
By then four officers were approaching the house warily, hands not far from their gun belts. The doorbell rang a moment later.
“Don’t answer it,” Sam warned, recalling An Chin’s warning.
“They’re cops,” Alex told her, as he moved for the door. “I don’t think we’ve got a choice and maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“You’re not crazy, Sam,” he said, his voice cracking with what might’ve been fear. “I’m not crazy, either. Something happened at the hospital and something happened here too.”
“You believe me?”
“I don’t really want to, I’m trying not to…”
He yanked open the door to reveal the four cops crowded onto the porch. “Millbrae police, son,” the one closest to the door with his notebook out said. “We got a report of a break-in. Is this your residence?”
“It is.”
“Are your parents home?”
Alex felt something tighten in his stomach. “I’m not sure, I don’t think so, anyway. No, they’re not.”
The lead cop exchanged a glance with the one on his right. “You mind if we come in, have a look?”
“Not at all,” Alex said, stepping aside so they could enter.
“Alex,” Sam protested quietly, as the cops slid through the door, one after another.
“It’s okay, Sam.”
The lead cop’s eyes fell upon her. “And who are you, young lady?”
“Samantha Dixon. I go to school with Alex.”
“That would be Alex Chin,” the cop said, referring to his notebook. Then, to Alex, “Is this your girlfriend?”
“I’m his tutor,” she chimed in, before Alex had a chance to an
swer.
“Tutor,” the cop repeated oddly, making a fresh note on his pad. “And that’s Dixon with an X?”
“Is there another way to spell it?”
The lead cop ignored her and looked back toward Alex. “You mind if we have a look around?”
“You asked me that already. The answer’s still yes, feel free.”
The other three cops scattered about the house, leaving the lead one with the living room.
“Do you have transportation home?” he asked Sam suddenly.
“I have my car, but I’m not leaving,” she told him, feeling her spine straighten.
“It might be best while we sort this out with the family, miss.”
“I don’t know where my parents are, Officer,” Alex said.
“Are those their cars in the driveway?”
“Yes.”
“Might they be at a neighbor’s house, maybe were picked up by someone?”
“Maybe.” Alex shrugged.
The cop eased past Sam, nearly brushing against her, and that’s when she smelled it: a faint, corrosive scent she barely recorded. Less like copper than she’d remembered and more like the wisps of the odor rising from a car engine as it cools down. And something else.
Oh, my God …
It was motor oil, the same scent she’d caught a whiff of when the man had taken the seat behind her in the bleachers last night, the man who’d stolen the iPad from her backpack. Come to think of it, he looked a lot like this cop.
Could it be, was it even possible that …
Her thought trailed off, Alex the only thing on her mind right now. She had to warn him.
“Alex,” she managed, fighting back against the grip of panic.
“Have you tried calling their cell phones?” the cop asked him, practically rolling over her words.
“No answer,” he reported.
“Alex,” Sam repeated, trying very hard not to gaze toward the cop who looked so much like the guy who’d snatched her iPad, which contained all the evidence of her findings she’d intended to share with Dr. Donati. Then those findings had vanished from the Cloud too. “Alex,” she said, just a bit louder.
He glanced her way and seemed to catch the fear and apprehension in her eyes. Then she touched her nose. Alex waited for the cop to draw closer to him, and his expression told her he’d caught the same scent in the air she had.
Sam looked back toward where she’d found the bodies of An and Li Chin, goose bumps prickling her flesh and a chill riding up her spine. When she turned around again, the other cops had all returned, seemingly at once, and were lined up in a kind of semicircle behind the lead one. He touched his nose, just as Sam had to signal Alex.
“I see you remember me,” he said to Sam. “That’s too bad.”
30
REAPPEARANCES
“THIS DOESN’T HAVE TO be difficult,” the lead cop continued, turning toward Alex, who, like Sam, was frozen in shock. “Cooperate with us and we’ll let the girl live.”
“Who the hell are you?” Alex managed, hands tightening into fists by his sides.
“Your family, so to speak. Your real family.”
“Where are my parents? What’d you do to them?”
“We hoped this wouldn’t be necessary.…”
Alex started forward but stopped quickly, thinking better of it. “I want to know where my mother and father are.”
The man blinked robotically. “Right over there,” he said, gesturing with his eyes.
Sam turned with Alex, both of them laying eyes on the Chins lying just where she’d seen them before, as if they’d reappeared out of nowhere. The blood was back too, though no message remained written in it that she could discern.
Alex rushed to his parents, his mother first because she seemed, incredibly, to still be clinging to life.
“Mom … Mom!”
Sam tried to make sense of what was happening, what she was seeing. She felt light-headed, almost like she was going to pass out. The living room started to spin softly around her. She reached down and groped for a nearby table to steady herself.
Alex rose from a crouch by his mother’s side. “You guys aren’t real cops.”
No response.
“I’m calling the real cops,” he resumed, moving for the phone.
Alex picked up the receiver. No dial tone. Dead. Set it back down as Sam watched, remembering how her own phone had stopped working. Neat trick, sure. But how had this guy managed to make the bodies of Alex’s parents appear again out of nowhere? And what had happened to the message scrawled in blood?
“Who are you?” Alex asked, a few graceful strides placing him closer to the man, with only the coffee table separating them.
“We already told you that.”
“No, you didn’t. You’re not my family.”
“In a manner of speaking, we are. We have our orders. You must come with us, Alex.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Try me, bitch,” Alex said, looking just as he did before laying into a rival player with a bone-crunching tackle from his safety position.
The man looked toward Sam while the eyes of the other fake cops, or whatever they were, remained fixed forward, resolutely emotionless. Sam realized the corrosive smell of something almost hot enough to burn had grown stronger. And now one of the fake cops had frozen in place, a hand stretched out before him as if he’d been reaching for something, his eyes dark and lifeless.
“This is for your own good,” the lead cop was saying. “You don’t belong here, with them.”
“With who? What the hell are you talking about?”
And then Sam realized Alex had positioned himself just over where he’d laid the tire iron down atop the coffee table.
“We’ve been looking for you a long time. Eighteen years. Your entire life. You belong with us.”
“Us as in who? You’re not cops and I want to know who you are and what you’re doing here. Why’d you hurt my parents?”
“You must come with us, Alex.”
“That sounded like an order.”
“You have no choice.”
“Yes, I do.”
And then Alex was in motion, like this was football, playing a game. The tire iron was resting on the coffee table and then it was in his hand, coming up overhead as he launched himself airborne over the table, bringing the tire iron downward at the same time.
Thwack!
The tire iron struck home, mashing what should’ve been flesh and skull. Only, the sound and feeling were more like metal on metal, steel on steel. The head he’d struck whipsawed to the side, canting as if on a piston. Alex glimpsed a huge dent, a divot dug into the spot where skin and blood should have been. The head snapped back, the depression remaining in place like a car dent.
“Alex!”
Sam’s scream alerted him to the second fake cop just in time. She’d sliced between them to ward off his attack and ended up being shoved violently sideways straight toward a wall, the impact rattling her enough to tear her feet from under her. She noticed plumes of smoke wafting out of the motionless cop’s ears, wisps of it rising out of his skull, as if his hair was on fire, hand still extended as if he’d seized up while directing traffic.
Alex, meanwhile, brought the tire iron straight down atop the head of the second man, not so much caving it inward as splitting it in two right down the middle. It cracked more like an eggshell than a skull, spitting wires like spaghetti in all directions, its eyes still trying to focus on him even though they’d ended up facing opposite directions away from their target with the tire iron itself still wedged into place.
The initial figure was coming at him again and a third figure had emerged from another part of the room holding an odd-looking object that resembled a miniature staple gun. Alex went into football mode, launching himself into a perfect tackle that propelled the third man backward with enough force to crash him through the
plaster of the wall. Alex lurched back upright in time to block a blow uncorked by the figure with the impossibly dented face. The man tried to pull his arm from Alex’s grasp, tugging hard.
Alex tugged harder.
And the arm broke off from the shoulder in his grasp, spitting more thick, spaghetti-like strands of wire that clung to both the severed limb and the joint itself. Alex gazed in shock at the arm he was holding, and the now one-armed figure who’d just seemed to realize he was missing it.
A crackling sounded and he swung to find the figure pulling itself from the wall through which he’d slammed it, managing a single step forward when Sam lunged and stuck her taser square against its temple. A staticky sound burst from the device on contact and then it flew into the air as a shock from the impact rode up Samantha’s arm and drove her backward. But smoke, gray and noxious, was pouring out of the man’s nostrils, mouth, and eyeballs, followed by a shower of sparks Alex could only liken to a transformer blowing in an electrical storm.
He swung back around just as the now-one-armed man came at him again, realizing at the very last moment he might not have the tire iron to wield anymore, but he did have something else:
The figure’s severed arm.
He used it like a baseball bat, slamming it into the already dented face on that side and then the other. Beating him senseless with it as hot bits of plastic and metal that smelled of burned rubber broke off and flew through the air like fireflies.
Still, Alex didn’t stop until nothing in the skull was remotely recognizable, quite fitting, since whatever these things were clearly wasn’t human at all. The rage spilled out of him, his mind-set the one he brought to the football field, filled with bone-crunching collisions.
They had hurt his parents. They deserved to die, whatever they were.
He was vaguely conscious of Samantha stirring against the wall down which she’d slumped. The burned-metal scent filled the air and he thought he heard cracking and popping as the things he was killing fizzled and stilled. He realized the single lamp was flickering, creating a strobe effect that allowed him to glimpse the remnants of his handiwork in broken splotches.
“It would seem I underestimated you, Alex,” a new voice called from the shadows.