I hereby reserve all copyrights not expressly granted to Timebomb for any works of fiction posted at Timebomb under my name - Fred
Members may copy for their own personal use.
Any other copying or distribution is expressly prohibited
Author's note: The following chapter is from an as-yet-unfinished work that will not be finished any time soon (if ever). If cliffhanger endings aren't your thing, you might want to skip it.
It also contains some words that should only be used by adults, and then only in a non-polite society.
Jake Freeman cranked up the radio, filling the Cherokee with Toby Keith’s voice, and tried not to think about the heat. Toby opined that no one talked about him enough, and Jake sang along to keep his mind occupied. Despite the air conditioner being at its highest setting, the inside of the Cherokee felt like a sauna. It bounced along state road 375 in southern Nevada—called the “E.T. Highway” by UFO hunters and freaks around the world because of its proximity to the infamous Area 51—but he was here for a less celestial reason: to hike to the top of Hancock Summit to observe what would have been the thirtieth birthday of his younger brother, Paul. His entrance into middle age, Jake might have jokingly said a few years ago, but now that he himself was pushing forty it was high time to revise that age up.
Paul had loved to hike and camp before he died, and Jake thought this hike would be a fitting tribute to his short life. Jake was active in the Scouts when he was Paul’s age, and Paul followed right in his footsteps, well on the way to Eagle Scout by the time he turned nine. Before the accident that claimed his life.
Before you killed him, Jake’s mind whispered.
He swiped at the sweat gathering on his brow and squinted down the road at the peak rising in the distance, trying to refocus on the present. Shimmering heat waves rising from the asphalt and terrain made the mountain appear to jitter in time to the music, like the dancing toy flower Paul got for his ninth birthday. His last birthday. Jake smiled at the thought, remembering how Paul sang “Born in the U.S.A.” at the party in a tremulous voice, giggling at the twisting plastic sunflower with the guitar and the too-cool shades.
Something caught his eye then, a splash of bright red against the drab desert soil. A boy, maybe ten years old, walked alone toward him on the dusty shoulder. Paul, he thought with a start, but the instant he did he realized that other than approximate age and height the child bore no real resemblance to his long-dead brother. Where Paul was blond and stocky with a perpetual tan, this boy was pale and drawn, so thin he seemed lost in his red t-shirt. His lank brown hair hung straight around his face.
As the Cherokee drew closer, he realized the boy’s walk was more like a controlled stumble, the lurching gait of a horror movie zombie. Jake pulled to the side of the road and lowered the window. The boy reeled toward him, oblivious to his presence.
“Hey,” Jake called. “You okay?”
The boy stopped and looked up. His head swiveled loosely, and he swayed in place for a moment while his swimming eyes searched for the source of the voice. Finally they found Jake.
“Please help me,” he said, taking a single shuffling step forward. His knees buckled and he pitched forward to the ground, barely catching himself with his hands before ending up with a faceful of dirt. Jake jumped out of the Cherokee and ran to him. The boy’s breath came quick and shallow.
“Come on,” Jake said, scooping the child up. He seemed weightless, like a sack of leaves, and his cool skin felt oddly out of place in the desert heat. “Let’s get you something to drink.”
He carried the boy to back of the Cherokee, popped the hatch, and deposited him in the cargo area, half expecting a policeman or angry parent to leap out from behind one of the scrubby pinyon pines and accuse him of kidnapping. He rummaged through his backpack until he found a bottle of water, which he held out. Without a word the boy took it and drank greedily, not stopping until the bottle was empty.
“Thanks,” he gasped when he was finished.
“Better?”
The boy nodded.
“Where are your parents?” Jake asked.
The boy frowned. “My dad is dead,” he said. “I don’t know where my mom is.”
“Are you lost? Were you hiking with her? Did something happen?” The Nevada wilderness isn’t kind to the inexperienced, and Jake could only imagine what might have happened to the boy’s mother.
“We have to get away from here,” the boy said, fear evident in his eyes. He hopped down from the bumper, his legs shaky like those of a newborn calf. “They’ll be coming for me.”
“Who’ll be coming for you?”
“Bad people.”
Jake started to ask the boy what the hell he was talking about, but the sound of an approaching car interrupted him. The effect the sound had on the boy was galvanizing. His eyes grew wide and his lips peeled back from his teeth in raw fear as he watched the car come closer.
“Mister,” he said in a panicked voice, and grabbed at Jake’s arm. “Please help me. Please don’t let them take me back.” Terror rolled off him in waves.
“Relax, nobody’s taking you anywhere,” Jake said, his steady voice belying the sudden flutter of apprehension in his belly.
He unzipped the outer compartment of his backpack. The sight of his Heckler and Koch .45 ACP, normally protection against any aggressive critters he might encounter on his hike, had a calming effect on his jangling nerves. He pulled the gun out of its holster and tucked it behind him into the waistband of his jeans.
“Stay behind me,” he said to the boy, as the black car pulled off the road and nosed up to the Jeep.
He saw two men through the dust-covered windshield, having what appeared to be a pretty animated conversation. The boy whimpered softly behind him. Jake reached into his pocket and slid out his cell phone. He glanced down at the tiny LCD screen. No service. Great.
So perfectly in unison it almost looked planned, both front doors of the car opened and the men climbed out. The shorter of the two—the driver—wore jeans and a green muscle shirt, and his closely cropped black hair was liberally sprinkled with gray. In one hand he carried what looked to Jake like a pocket PC. The taller man was similarly dressed, only his shirt was blue and his crewed hair was brown. He held a metal box with a handle that reminded Jake of the radiation detectors he saw the ground troops carrying back in Desert Storm. Both men looked to be carved from the same piece of granite. Twenty years in the Army told Jake these were fellow military men, ex-Marines if he had to wager it.
The boy screamed, a high thin sound, and tried to run away. He didn’t get more than a few steps before he stumbled and again fell to his hands and knees.
“Howdy,” Greenshirt called out in an affable voice, lifting one hand in a wave. His mouth widened into a smile that didn’t reach his dead eyes as he walked toward Jake. “I hope Andrew hasn’t been giving you any trouble. Sometimes he likes to tell stories.”
The boy—Andrew—tried to scrabble away, crablike. Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he made no sound.
“Who are you?” Jake asked, moving closer to Andrew.
“I’m his father.”
“No he isn’t,” Andrew screamed. “He’s one of the men who killed my father!”
“Knock it off, son,” Greenshirt said, the smile leaving his flat face. “Quit playing games and come with me.”
“He’s not my father,” Andrew said, grabbing at Jake’s leg. “Please help me—don’t let him take me back!”
“I don’t know who you are or what you want with Andrew, but he obviously doesn’t want to go with you,” Jake said to Greenshirt, holding up one hand while he casually reached around to lay the other on the butt of his pistol. “So I think maybe you should just stop right there.”
“And I think you should get your other ****ing hand where I can see it,” Blueshirt said, producing a gun seemingly from thin air.
Jake debated this for a moment, weighing the odds, then slowly brought his empty hand around and held it up.
“Smart man,” Greenshirt said, the smile returning. He pulled his own gun and trained it on Jake. From this end it looked like the Holland Tunnel. “Andrew, cut the crap and let’s go.”
“No.” Andrew’s voice sounded stronger than it had just a few seconds ago. Deeper somehow. Jake risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that the boy was now standing tall, his eyes fixed on Greenshirt.
“Sir, please step out of the way,” Greenshirt said, waving his hand to one side in case Jake didn’t understand the simple directive.
“Put the guns down,” Jake replied. “We can talk about this like civilized people, can’t we?”
It dawned on him that nobody knew where he was, that he’d taken off without a word to anyone to observe Paul’s birthday alone, and if these guys killed him and left his body for the vultures no one would be the wiser. A pointless end to a pointless life.
“Andrew,” Greenshirt called, “if you don’t come with us I’m going to shoot your new friend. Then he’ll be dead, just because he was trying to help you. Is that what you want, another death on your head?”
“Just stay behind me,” Jake said again.
“Leave him alone,” Andrew said, stepping around Jake, his fear gone. “He didn’t do anything.”
The hairs on Jake’s neck lifted and stood up. The air felt heavy, electrified. Once on a hike across the exposed ridge of Beaver Mountain, Jake had been caught off-guard by a sudden thunderstorm and forced to seek shelter under a jutting rock overhang. A bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree, cleaving it with a furious explosion, and just before it did, the air had felt like this. Jake looked up at the perfectly clear blue sky.
Andrew took a step toward Greenshirt, his gaze unwavering. Greenshirt swung his gun from Jake to the boy, and took a step back.
“Get out of my head, kid. I can feel you,” he said, a quaver in his voice. He spoke over his shoulder. “What’s wrong with the ****ing EMF generator?”
Blueshirt examined the metal box in his hands. “It’s yellow across the board, man. It’s working.”
Andrew took another step forward. Greenshirt thumbed back the hammer on his gun.
“I’m not kidding, kid,” he said. “You’re about two seconds from being dead, orders to bring you back alive be damned.”
Suddenly, he swung the gun upward until it was pointed at the cloudless sky. He stared helplessly up at his hand with wide eyes. A bead of sweat slipped from his hairline and forged a glistening trail down his forehead.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Andrew asked. “To see with your own eyes if I can really do it or not?” His voice shook with fury.
Jake wondered if he might be going crazy. How had the situation turned so quickly? He reached out and laid his hand on Andrew’s shoulder, startling the boy into glancing back at him.
“Shoot him, goddamn it!” Greenshirt cried over his shoulder, taking advantage of the break in Andrew’s concentration. “Blow his ****ing—”
Jake heard an angry buzzing between his ears—later he would liken it to having a hornet’s nest in his skull—and felt a gentle caress of warm air puff across his body like a sigh. Before Greenshirt finished speaking Blueshirt’s gun roared. One side of Greenshirt’s face sheared away in a gout of red and mealy gray and he fell forward, his mouth moving soundlessly. Blueshirt pressed the gun under his own chin.
“No,” he whispered.
He pulled the trigger.
Jake’s mind reeled, trying to make some semblance of sense out of what he’d just seen. Andrew turned to him, his face so pale the veins stood out in sharp relief through his translucent skin.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, and then his eyes rolled up and he pitched forward, unconscious.
Members may copy for their own personal use.
Any other copying or distribution is expressly prohibited
Author's note: The following chapter is from an as-yet-unfinished work that will not be finished any time soon (if ever). If cliffhanger endings aren't your thing, you might want to skip it.
It also contains some words that should only be used by adults, and then only in a non-polite society.******************************************
One
One
Jake Freeman cranked up the radio, filling the Cherokee with Toby Keith’s voice, and tried not to think about the heat. Toby opined that no one talked about him enough, and Jake sang along to keep his mind occupied. Despite the air conditioner being at its highest setting, the inside of the Cherokee felt like a sauna. It bounced along state road 375 in southern Nevada—called the “E.T. Highway” by UFO hunters and freaks around the world because of its proximity to the infamous Area 51—but he was here for a less celestial reason: to hike to the top of Hancock Summit to observe what would have been the thirtieth birthday of his younger brother, Paul. His entrance into middle age, Jake might have jokingly said a few years ago, but now that he himself was pushing forty it was high time to revise that age up.
Paul had loved to hike and camp before he died, and Jake thought this hike would be a fitting tribute to his short life. Jake was active in the Scouts when he was Paul’s age, and Paul followed right in his footsteps, well on the way to Eagle Scout by the time he turned nine. Before the accident that claimed his life.
Before you killed him, Jake’s mind whispered.
He swiped at the sweat gathering on his brow and squinted down the road at the peak rising in the distance, trying to refocus on the present. Shimmering heat waves rising from the asphalt and terrain made the mountain appear to jitter in time to the music, like the dancing toy flower Paul got for his ninth birthday. His last birthday. Jake smiled at the thought, remembering how Paul sang “Born in the U.S.A.” at the party in a tremulous voice, giggling at the twisting plastic sunflower with the guitar and the too-cool shades.
Something caught his eye then, a splash of bright red against the drab desert soil. A boy, maybe ten years old, walked alone toward him on the dusty shoulder. Paul, he thought with a start, but the instant he did he realized that other than approximate age and height the child bore no real resemblance to his long-dead brother. Where Paul was blond and stocky with a perpetual tan, this boy was pale and drawn, so thin he seemed lost in his red t-shirt. His lank brown hair hung straight around his face.
As the Cherokee drew closer, he realized the boy’s walk was more like a controlled stumble, the lurching gait of a horror movie zombie. Jake pulled to the side of the road and lowered the window. The boy reeled toward him, oblivious to his presence.
“Hey,” Jake called. “You okay?”
The boy stopped and looked up. His head swiveled loosely, and he swayed in place for a moment while his swimming eyes searched for the source of the voice. Finally they found Jake.
“Please help me,” he said, taking a single shuffling step forward. His knees buckled and he pitched forward to the ground, barely catching himself with his hands before ending up with a faceful of dirt. Jake jumped out of the Cherokee and ran to him. The boy’s breath came quick and shallow.
“Come on,” Jake said, scooping the child up. He seemed weightless, like a sack of leaves, and his cool skin felt oddly out of place in the desert heat. “Let’s get you something to drink.”
He carried the boy to back of the Cherokee, popped the hatch, and deposited him in the cargo area, half expecting a policeman or angry parent to leap out from behind one of the scrubby pinyon pines and accuse him of kidnapping. He rummaged through his backpack until he found a bottle of water, which he held out. Without a word the boy took it and drank greedily, not stopping until the bottle was empty.
“Thanks,” he gasped when he was finished.
“Better?”
The boy nodded.
“Where are your parents?” Jake asked.
The boy frowned. “My dad is dead,” he said. “I don’t know where my mom is.”
“Are you lost? Were you hiking with her? Did something happen?” The Nevada wilderness isn’t kind to the inexperienced, and Jake could only imagine what might have happened to the boy’s mother.
“We have to get away from here,” the boy said, fear evident in his eyes. He hopped down from the bumper, his legs shaky like those of a newborn calf. “They’ll be coming for me.”
“Who’ll be coming for you?”
“Bad people.”
Jake started to ask the boy what the hell he was talking about, but the sound of an approaching car interrupted him. The effect the sound had on the boy was galvanizing. His eyes grew wide and his lips peeled back from his teeth in raw fear as he watched the car come closer.
“Mister,” he said in a panicked voice, and grabbed at Jake’s arm. “Please help me. Please don’t let them take me back.” Terror rolled off him in waves.
“Relax, nobody’s taking you anywhere,” Jake said, his steady voice belying the sudden flutter of apprehension in his belly.
He unzipped the outer compartment of his backpack. The sight of his Heckler and Koch .45 ACP, normally protection against any aggressive critters he might encounter on his hike, had a calming effect on his jangling nerves. He pulled the gun out of its holster and tucked it behind him into the waistband of his jeans.
“Stay behind me,” he said to the boy, as the black car pulled off the road and nosed up to the Jeep.
He saw two men through the dust-covered windshield, having what appeared to be a pretty animated conversation. The boy whimpered softly behind him. Jake reached into his pocket and slid out his cell phone. He glanced down at the tiny LCD screen. No service. Great.
So perfectly in unison it almost looked planned, both front doors of the car opened and the men climbed out. The shorter of the two—the driver—wore jeans and a green muscle shirt, and his closely cropped black hair was liberally sprinkled with gray. In one hand he carried what looked to Jake like a pocket PC. The taller man was similarly dressed, only his shirt was blue and his crewed hair was brown. He held a metal box with a handle that reminded Jake of the radiation detectors he saw the ground troops carrying back in Desert Storm. Both men looked to be carved from the same piece of granite. Twenty years in the Army told Jake these were fellow military men, ex-Marines if he had to wager it.
The boy screamed, a high thin sound, and tried to run away. He didn’t get more than a few steps before he stumbled and again fell to his hands and knees.
“Howdy,” Greenshirt called out in an affable voice, lifting one hand in a wave. His mouth widened into a smile that didn’t reach his dead eyes as he walked toward Jake. “I hope Andrew hasn’t been giving you any trouble. Sometimes he likes to tell stories.”
The boy—Andrew—tried to scrabble away, crablike. Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he made no sound.
“Who are you?” Jake asked, moving closer to Andrew.
“I’m his father.”
“No he isn’t,” Andrew screamed. “He’s one of the men who killed my father!”
“Knock it off, son,” Greenshirt said, the smile leaving his flat face. “Quit playing games and come with me.”
“He’s not my father,” Andrew said, grabbing at Jake’s leg. “Please help me—don’t let him take me back!”
“I don’t know who you are or what you want with Andrew, but he obviously doesn’t want to go with you,” Jake said to Greenshirt, holding up one hand while he casually reached around to lay the other on the butt of his pistol. “So I think maybe you should just stop right there.”
“And I think you should get your other ****ing hand where I can see it,” Blueshirt said, producing a gun seemingly from thin air.
Jake debated this for a moment, weighing the odds, then slowly brought his empty hand around and held it up.
“Smart man,” Greenshirt said, the smile returning. He pulled his own gun and trained it on Jake. From this end it looked like the Holland Tunnel. “Andrew, cut the crap and let’s go.”
“No.” Andrew’s voice sounded stronger than it had just a few seconds ago. Deeper somehow. Jake risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that the boy was now standing tall, his eyes fixed on Greenshirt.
“Sir, please step out of the way,” Greenshirt said, waving his hand to one side in case Jake didn’t understand the simple directive.
“Put the guns down,” Jake replied. “We can talk about this like civilized people, can’t we?”
It dawned on him that nobody knew where he was, that he’d taken off without a word to anyone to observe Paul’s birthday alone, and if these guys killed him and left his body for the vultures no one would be the wiser. A pointless end to a pointless life.
“Andrew,” Greenshirt called, “if you don’t come with us I’m going to shoot your new friend. Then he’ll be dead, just because he was trying to help you. Is that what you want, another death on your head?”
“Just stay behind me,” Jake said again.
“Leave him alone,” Andrew said, stepping around Jake, his fear gone. “He didn’t do anything.”
The hairs on Jake’s neck lifted and stood up. The air felt heavy, electrified. Once on a hike across the exposed ridge of Beaver Mountain, Jake had been caught off-guard by a sudden thunderstorm and forced to seek shelter under a jutting rock overhang. A bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree, cleaving it with a furious explosion, and just before it did, the air had felt like this. Jake looked up at the perfectly clear blue sky.
Andrew took a step toward Greenshirt, his gaze unwavering. Greenshirt swung his gun from Jake to the boy, and took a step back.
“Get out of my head, kid. I can feel you,” he said, a quaver in his voice. He spoke over his shoulder. “What’s wrong with the ****ing EMF generator?”
Blueshirt examined the metal box in his hands. “It’s yellow across the board, man. It’s working.”
Andrew took another step forward. Greenshirt thumbed back the hammer on his gun.
“I’m not kidding, kid,” he said. “You’re about two seconds from being dead, orders to bring you back alive be damned.”
Suddenly, he swung the gun upward until it was pointed at the cloudless sky. He stared helplessly up at his hand with wide eyes. A bead of sweat slipped from his hairline and forged a glistening trail down his forehead.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Andrew asked. “To see with your own eyes if I can really do it or not?” His voice shook with fury.
Jake wondered if he might be going crazy. How had the situation turned so quickly? He reached out and laid his hand on Andrew’s shoulder, startling the boy into glancing back at him.
“Shoot him, goddamn it!” Greenshirt cried over his shoulder, taking advantage of the break in Andrew’s concentration. “Blow his ****ing—”
Jake heard an angry buzzing between his ears—later he would liken it to having a hornet’s nest in his skull—and felt a gentle caress of warm air puff across his body like a sigh. Before Greenshirt finished speaking Blueshirt’s gun roared. One side of Greenshirt’s face sheared away in a gout of red and mealy gray and he fell forward, his mouth moving soundlessly. Blueshirt pressed the gun under his own chin.
“No,” he whispered.
He pulled the trigger.
Jake’s mind reeled, trying to make some semblance of sense out of what he’d just seen. Andrew turned to him, his face so pale the veins stood out in sharp relief through his translucent skin.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed, and then his eyes rolled up and he pitched forward, unconscious.
