Nemesis: Box Set: Books 1 - 3 Page 12

  He could do nothing, though. Nothing but watch.

  Thera entered the room, her eyes wide, scared, but not running away. Not going anywhere. She had showed up by herself to check on him, and that meant people were worrying. Bryan listened as she called his name, listened as she asked questions, and he unable to answer a single one.

  Morena sat up on the bed and that’s when Thera knew. Bryan saw it in her face, in the way her body both tensed and seemed to sink in, to try and hide from whatever was on the bed. She didn’t run though, not even then.

  Morena stood from the bed; Bryan hoped her legs would give out, that whatever fatigue she felt would rise and take over, causing her to fall down and giving Thera a chance to run. It didn’t happen; his legs stood like iron poles, strong underneath the weight of his body. She walked to Thera, and Bryan saw everything he needed to inside his friend’s eyes. He saw exactly what he must have looked like, standing over her—taller naturally, but seeming to tower now. Pure fear resided in Thera. Fear of him, or rather, what he had become.

  Morena’s head tilted slightly to the left, staring at Thera’s face. She was curious. The fucking monster was curious about Thera, about the way she looked, about who she was—wanting to know more about the interloper. And still, Bryan felt the threat inside that look, a threat because Morena didn’t care about this life—curiosity like a sick child, pulling the wings from a butterfly.

  Morena reached forward, her hand grabbing Thera’s face.

  Bryan listened as Thera screamed out, but it lasted for less than a second. He felt the tiny needles poke through the skin on his hand and then he saw the blood spurt from of Thera’s face.

  21

  Present Day

  Will looked at the school as he walked across the parking lot. There were a few trailers to the left, meaning the town was growing quicker than builders could build. The school was newer, built within the last ten years or so, he thought—it looked nice. Probably full of good kids, kids without arrest records. Kids who would go to college. Kids who would end up having kids of their own, most likely remaining married, if not out of love for their spouse, then out of love for their kids.

  Not anymore, Will thought as he walked through the front doors, the green color of the school’s mascot jumping out from the walls and posters hanging around him. He stood in a large lobby, open space before him, signs hanging about the importance of education and the school’s mission. After a few seconds of taking it in, he looked down at his feet—a lone man standing in an empty auditorium. Why did he care about this? Why was it affecting him now? How many towns had he gone through just like this without a thought for the people inside it? Countless. Thirty years worth. And yet with this one, standing in this auditorium, he found himself considering the people in this school. The kids. From thirteen to eighteen years old, and all of them going to die soon.

  If they died, he died too. That’s what he was really saying, that all of this was coming to an end. Did he believe it? Truly? Or did he think he could get out of this? In Bolivia, he was worried about dying, but only if that pink shit reached up and took ahold of him. If it did that, there wasn’t any chance he made it out, but that was the main danger. Avoid the pink shit and you’d be fine. Now, though…he had nothing to avoid, rather, he had to beat the clock, and it ticked on, regardless of what he did.

  And what about all these people in here? These kids? Do they matter?

  That was an odd thought to have, now, standing in this school with that clock still tick, tick, ticking away. Did they matter, though? No. Not really. They could die or live, and it didn’t matter to Will. What did matter to him, what had always mattered, was the larger group—humanity. These kids could die, Will could die, if it meant that whatever was crawling around this town didn’t get out. Didn’t try to take over the world, or simply feed on the inhabitants, or whatever it was wont to do. That had always been the rule, the reason for this.

  So why stand here thinking about them?

  Just let it fucking go.

  He didn’t have time for it, any of it. The truth was that they would die if he didn’t do something. That he would die.

  Will walked on, seeing an empty lunchroom to his right. Lunch was done by this time, the day about to wrap up. Will found his way to the front office, the door standing open and a middle-aged woman sitting behind a desk. Heavy, though not as massive as Will thought people should be when they didn’t move for the vast majority of their days.

  “Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m Dennis Gables; I’m with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and have a few questions about some of the students at this school.” Will pulled a badge from his back pocket, one that had been shipped to him on the way down here, one of many that he might need.

  “Oh goodness. Dennis Gables, you say? I hope it’s nothing too serious,” the woman said, standing up from behind her desk. She didn’t move, only stared at him as if she wanted an answer to her question.

  “No, nothing too serious, just a few questions is all,” Will said, smiling—a smile that grew naturally across his face, one that he had practiced thousands of times in a mirror. The smile that said, You can trust me. I’m your friend and I’m here to make sure things keep running as they should, and even if I have to discipline someone, I promise it’s for their own good and that it won’t be harsh.

  She smiled back, as everyone did when he flashed his teeth, unable to keep his smile from possessing them briefly, to fill them with a sense of security.

  “Let me get the principal, Mr. Gables,” she said, turning from the desk and walking down a hallway behind her. Will waited alone for a couple of minutes, not sitting down and not picking the badge up from the woman’s desk. He glanced around the office, taking in the motivational posters and plants around him. There weren’t any kids in here, no one in trouble, no parents irate with the school. It reminded him of his high school, only with more technology, given the flat screen television hanging from the wall and broadcasting the school news on an endless loop. He had gone to a school like this. He had grown up in peace like this.

  Goddamn it, STOP.

  He wasn’t going down that road. He wasn’t going to sit here and entertain all these nostalgic and sentimental thoughts.

  “Come on back, Mr. Gables,” the woman appeared, from the office in the back, waving her hand and smiling still. She had bought his grin without getting a receipt, so convinced that law enforcement was here to protect her—that while someone might have done something wrong, it wasn’t her, and she would assist in making sure the world was made right again. That grin brought Will back to the here and now, to the mission. That grin reminded him of how stupid all the people in this place had to be, how they believed whatever anyone told them and kept moving on with their lives. The woman didn’t have a single questioning neuron in her whole brain, just a blind need to follow. That’s why this school didn’t matter. Why the people inside it were secondary to eradication. Why if they needed to die, it wouldn’t be a huge loss to the planet.

  “Sure,” he said, smiling again and picking up the badge but not putting it in his pocket. He walked the few feet and then turned the corner to see a good sized office with a desk, a table, and chairs around both. A woman walked out from behind the desk with her hand extended.

  “Hi, Mr. Gables. I’m the principal, Jill Broje. How can I help you?”

  Will shook her hand, showing the same smile.

  “Dennis, please,” Will said. “Here’s my badge just so you know I am who I say I am.”

  The woman looked down and gave it a cursory look before finding Will’s eyes again, still smiling.

  “First, I want you to know this isn’t too, too serious,” Will said. “However, the GBI has had some complaints about students drinking out at a field on the west side of your town, and we want to come talk to the kids. No one’s getting arrested, but we thought it would be a good idea to, you know, scare them a bit to keep t
hem from going there.”

  Jill shook her head and looked down at the floor, smiling. “I thought that was happening.” She looked up at him. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the chairs in front of her desk, before she turned and walked to her own seat. “What would you like to do? We could set up something in the gym and you could talk to the group as a whole—would that work?”

  Will shook his head and pursed his lips, “Ehh, not really. We find it’s a lot more impactful to have one on ones with the students that are actually committing the offense. And, it will keep from wasting a bunch of the kid’s learning time by doing it that way. They really need to know that we know who they are, and that we’re watching. Do you have anyone that I might be able to start with, to ask them a few questions?”

  Jill looked at him for a second, appearing to think. “I do, most likely, but I think their parents should be there for the questioning, don’t you?”

  Jesus Christ. He hadn’t even thought of that. To him, he would come in here, corner whoever was out there, and talk to them while the tech on his body registered whatever it registered. He didn’t have time for parents. He didn’t have time for a big formal process. He wanted to march through the kids, one after another, and see what he could find—but he couldn’t tell this woman that.

  “Actually, since none of them are being accused of crimes, there’s no legal reason for their parents to be here. Also, a lot of times, when kids are in trouble for drinking underage, they tend to hide behind their parents instead of actually taking the blame and understanding what they did wrong. I promise, this isn’t going to be the Spanish Inquisition. I’ll probably only need to speak to two of the leaders, and they’ll push the message down to the rest of the crowd. We’re talking an hour tops.”

  Will smiled and leaned in over her desk, whispering, “To be honest, I don’t really want to be here. There are a lot of crimes in Georgia, and this isn’t a huge one on my list, so the quicker we get it over with, the better, you know?”

  Jill nodded. “Of course, of course. Let me pull Jonathan out of his class and you can have a chat with him. If anyone’s the ringleader of this sort of thing, it’s him.”

  “Thank you so much,” Will said, leaning back in his chair and smiling the smile of the innocent.

  * * *

  The kid was clean-cut. No facial hair, no piercings, no visible tattoos. He looked like the All-American teenage guy. His hands were shaking, folded over the table he sat at. Will stood, the door closed behind him. If this kid was in that field, he certainly hadn’t been infected, unless this species could somehow mimic perfectly. Will didn’t care right now, either way—if this was the guy they wanted, then Lane and Andrew would be able to tell Will almost immediately.

  “You got paper?” Will asked, pointing to the kid’s bag.

  Jonathan nodded.

  “Pull it out and get a pen. Write down every name that you think might have been out there with you guys over the last few days. Every single one, you understand?”

  Jonathan nodded again.

  “You don’t tell anyone what we talked about in here. Not a soul. If you do, I’m coming back, got that?”

  Another nod.

  “Now get to writing and stay the fuck away from that field.”

  * * *

  The first good news Will had brought, though it wasn’t even that good.

  “The list is forty-two names long. The kid didn’t know if everyone was actually there, but he knew that everyone he wrote down had at one time been there.”

  “How long’s it going to take you?” Rigley asked.

  “I think it should be wrapped up by tomorrow at noon.”

  “That’s twelve hours over the forty-eight hour deadline,” Rigley said.

  Silence came back across the line, a silence that said everything. What do you want me to do? Drop the hammer, then, but noon is when I’ll be done.

  She waited, wanting him to say something, but still nothing came. Who was in charge here? That’s what the silence seemed to be deciding, and this was the first time she ever felt like it might be Will. Before, what she commanded, happened. No questions. No delays. Will was the hammer, or had been for years. And now, for the first time, he hadn’t met his deadline. Even in Bolivia, he’d met the deadline. Every other country, every other situation—he met the deadline. Twelve hours over and not a single excuse or word of regret.

  “This is serious, Will,” she said, doing anything to break the silence. “Forty-eight hours was enough time. Now I’ve got to make a decision.”

  “That you do,” he said.

  “Is this thing going to get out? I mean, we don’t even know what it’s doing down there. Grayson is a black box, and you’re supposed to be the one opening it. Now you’re telling me you can’t fucking do that?” She hoped her words spit through the air waves like snake venom, scaring Will into action. She hoped that the anger she portrayed came off as sincere, that the underlying…but she didn’t want to name it. She didn’t want to say it out loud because then it might be real.

  “No, I’m not saying I can’t do that. I’m saying I need a bit more time. If we go through these kids, we’re going to most likely find whoever went out, whoever saw that thing drop.”

  “And what if it’s not one of them, Will? What’s your plan then?”

  “Then you know what decision you have to make.”

  Twelve hours. That’s what he was saying, that’s all that separated America from dropping a bomb on one of its own cities. Granted, the bomb wouldn’t be nuclear, they had different kinds of weapons now, but it would still kill every single person living in that town. How had it gotten this far along? What had she done wrong, to be twelve hours away from issuing something like this. She needed to tell her superior, to tell John, but what would he say to her? Probably ask the same question she was asking herself right now. How did this happen? If she dropped that bomb, her career was over. For all intents and purposes, her life would be over.

  “Will, you have to find this thing,” she said. “Whatever it is, you have to find it.”

  He didn’t say anything back and that’s when she thought he knew. Thought he understood the frantic pace of her mind, her almost paralyzing fear. He saw it, and would be the first of many if this thing didn’t reach a resolution soon. That was the death knell for her, when people understood she was out of her element—and Will saw it now; he had to.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “No, that’s it.”

  Will hung up the phone and Rigley pulled hers down slightly from her face. She looked at it for a second, the flat touch screen, black now—and that summed up this whole operation. Darkness falling across it.

  She dropped the phone to the wooden table, and looked at the screen on the wall. It was a map of the town, this Grayson. Black dots sprung up all over the map, places that the three in her team had hit today. They made it to a lot of houses, a hell of a lot for three people; Rigley wondered if they had talked at all of these, or just let the trackers pick up abnormalities. A quick glance told her around three hundred houses hit in fourteen hours. And now they had a list of kids that Will felt would lead them to who saw the thing fall. He said that they had a party out there the night it came down, so at least one of them probably saw it. Three hundred houses and not a single movement on any of their trackers, no sightings.

  She knew that she needed to call this in, knew it the way a bear knows when it’s time to begin hibernation. When the hammer was a possibility, she was supposed to let someone know, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, not yet. She wasn’t going to send it up the chain, because if she did, then there wasn’t any chance of stopping the entire town from being obliterated. There wasn’t any hope that anyone in that town lived. There wasn’t any hope that she didn’t break that promise she made.

  The whole house was shaking right now, and she was running around stupidly, trying to make sure pictures didn’t fall off the wall.

  Sh
e knew why Will wanted to clean this up; her superiors wouldn’t let this thing spread to anyone else. He wasn’t getting out of Grayson unless there was confirmation that the arrival had been completely neutralized. Otherwise, he would be part of that neutralization, in that they had to assume he was compromised, just as they had to assume everyone else in the town was. Rigley would sell her soul and Will would die.

  So at least he had some outside motivation to quit fucking up.

  * * *

  The air on the staircase was somehow cooler, though it wasn’t closed off from the rest of the house. Rigley knew why though, because with each step she moved upwards, the air grew just a bit colder—the closer she moved to the second floor of her mind, the colder everything became. She could still see a bit, the lights at the bottom of the stairs tossing some rays upwards, and she could see the goosebumps across her flesh.

  She didn’t want to climb. She didn’t want to take another step into the deepening darkness, but somehow she couldn’t stop. Just like in real life, where she couldn’t pull away from Grayson, Georgia—where she couldn’t walk away from what she felt was surely coming—she couldn’t walk away from this. For so long she had ignored it, acting like the new levels in this mental house weren’t there, or that they were normal, just a part of growing older.

  They weren’t normal.

  She had put this here, and she was beginning to realize that now. That some part of her built all this and that the cold she felt upstairs was the reason for it, or at least one of them. That she couldn’t survive long if she was forced to live where she could see her breath every time it exited her mouth. Something had to keep this cold away from her and that ended up being the different floors—keeping her safe.