The Demon Senders Page 15

  Henry had told him, “Three days. You have to complete your part within three days. No sooner and no later.”

  “I have no fucking way to know when a day ends and a new one begins,” Phillip had snapped back. “No way to time my execution with whatever the hell it is that you’re planning over there. This won’t work, Henry. Drop the thing now before it’s too late.”

  “You goddamned pussy. You’re worried about something that doesn’t even matter here. It’s always three days. Always. Take a shit and it takes three days. Have a conversation, three days. Everything is three days. Haven’t you learned anything yet? You haven’t figured anything out yet, you stupid fucking moron.”

  “Then why tell me that I have to do it in three days, exactly?”

  “You can’t hesitate. You can’t delay. Follow him, find him and raise him to the ground. One, two, three.”

  If Henry was to be believed, Phillip was struggling through his day one. The pull was so strong at times that it whisked him away from his course. Each time he was pulled away, the struggle to regain his direction became more challenging. Without the ability to choose or the vision to navigate by a landmark meant that Phillip had only an internal sense to chart his steps by. And with each mustered effort, his internal senses drew less and less retrievable.

  He was lost in a world filled with nothing but the lost. His anger grew, and with nothing but rage and crippling fear to drive him, he blasted out a scream so desperate and vacant of hope that the shadowy figures of those he passed were sent scurrying for imagined cover, their arms raised against an expected blow.

  There was no passing of time, of that, Henry was right. There was no light that waxed or waned and no gradual change in temperature. There was just the continual diffused brightness that originated somewhere well beyond his reach or sight. It wasn’t a light, he realized as he surrendered to the pull and abandoned his course, it was a glow. A pulsing, nearly palpable glow that was certainly without a center point. It was just there. Everywhere and, like him, nowhere.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Jen and Lisa hadn’t planned for how quickly—and badly—the weather could turn in late February in the Northeast. When they left the D.C. Metro area and headed north on Interstate 95, there was a promising, damp chill in the air but the sky was clear. As the two reached the Pennsylvania border, the heavy sky started to spit out its promises in the form of wet snow. The driving ping of hail sounded a disturbing roll of high pitched noises, filling the car with disconcerting sounds.

  “You’d think that me being from Upstate New York,” Lisa joked, trying to ease the obvious concern on Jen’s face, “that I’d be used to driving in shit weather.”

  “Think we should pull over?” Jen asked. “Congresswoman Flannigan isn’t scheduled to hit Upstate till tomorrow afternoon anyway.”

  “And miss hitting my old hot spots tonight?” Lisa continued the joke. “No way. It isn’t bad yet. If it does get slippery, we’ll find a spot to wait out the storm. We’ll just have to check the weather to make sure we aren’t sitting around waiting for a bigger weather problem to arrive.”

  The two drove north for another two hours before the storm began to drop heavy snow and send gusty winds. It was outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania when the two, after confirming with the weather app on Jen’s phone that the storm was going to increase in intensity over the next several hours before tapering off to light flurries well after midnight, decided to stop for the night.

  “Tomorrow looks clear,” Jen said, relieved to be getting off the sometimes treacherous Route 81. “So long as the roads are clear, we should be able to head out before nine in the morning.”

  “Gets us to the Utica area around one in the afternoon. Hope that Flannigan scheduled an afternoon meeting.”

  After checking into a major hotel chain, booking the sole remaining single room, Lisa and Jen walked across the parking lot to the adjoining chain restaurant. Once seated in the bar, Lisa, as was her tendency, started off the conversation.

  “Chain restaurant and chain hotel. Nothing like a glamorous getaway from the office, huh?”

  “Gives us more time to figure out what we’re going to do if we ever do find Congresswoman Flannigan. Plus, I’m not used to snowstorms. It was freaking me out.”

  “Well, now the only thing we need to worry about is walking back to room 326 in a blizzard.” Lisa gestured to the window, through which she could see that the storm had picked up its intensity.

  She ordered an apple martini for herself, while Jen chose a Riesling. “And do us a favor,” she said as the waitress began to turn and put in their drink orders at the bar, “tell any guy who wants to buy us a drink that we live an alternative lifestyle. That should keep them talking and away from our table, right Jen?”

  Lisa raised her right hand, requesting a “high five” from her table-mate who was wondering how it was possible that she could blush so quickly and so completely.

  “You always know how to make friends and influence people wherever you go, Lisa!”

  After the second round of drinks was delivered and half consumed, Lisa’s cell phone belted out her “Someone Like You” ringtone, Adele’s hauntingly melodic voice cutting through the noisy barroom area. “It’s Jason,” she said after checking the caller ID. “Give me five.” Jen slid her finger across the phone’s screen, held the phone up to one ear while covering the other with her free hand. She stood, and nodded to Jen before leaving the crowded and noisy barroom area.

  As she sat at the high-top table, Jen let her eyes wander the crowded bar. She never was one to look for anyone substantial in a bar, nor was she the type who would choose a quick fling over a good book and a good night’s rest. But Jen was lonely, and had been so since she ended it with her last boyfriend. That relationship lasted nearly nine months before she found out he had had two other relationships going for about as long, at the same time.

  “We’re not married, Jen,” he began his anemic defense. “It’s not like you gave me enough reason to not check out what else was out there.”

  She ended it quickly, hoping that he wouldn’t mind losing her from his stable and praying that the breakup would go over smoothly. She feared what he might say, the accusations he could levy. “You’re too fucking boring,” was one she’d heard before. “Do a little more with yourself, and, hey, who knows what could happen?” was another. Or her personal favorite, “I just don’t feel any spark with you.” That one hurt. That one hit too close to home for Jennifer LaMore.

  It wasn’t because she lacked energy, passion for life or lived the life of a wallflower that the existence of “spark-less” relationships concerned her so. It was her belief that plain, ordinary people don’t have the sex appeal, the “wow” factor that most men are looking for. That’s what her mother had told her countless times when she would “gently” suggest that her only daughter “loosen up a little, have some fun.”

  Jen lived with her mother after her parents divorced. Jen was eleven and running full speed into puberty. The awkward years were certainly no friend to Jen, and her mother’s frequent reminders that, “The secret to a happy life is finding a good man,” were never spared during dinner conversations. Her mother had told Jen that her marriage ended because the spark had died out.

  “It goes both ways, sweetheart,” her mother said one evening. “You lose it or he loses it, doesn’t much matter. And, honey, you know that I love you more than anything in this God-forsaken world, but if you don’t show a little spark in your appearance, you won’t have any spark in the bedroom. And a man needs a spark there most of all!”

  As her teenage years rolled on and Jen’s best efforts to remove or hide her plain beauty resulted in frustration, she grew to accept that she would have to settle and may never find a man with whom she could make lasting sparks.

  Jen was still surveying the room darting her eyes away if her gaze met a guy’s, when Lisa sat back down, her hair covered with freshly fallen snow. “Wait til
l you hear what Jason just told me. You’re gonna flip.” Lisa flung her head side to side, sending wet snow across the round-top table, as she gave the cursory scene check she had promised Jason she would do.

  “Thanks for the shower,” Jen said, using her napkin to dry her face and the top of the table.

  “So, little Miss Stacy Pants….”

  “That’s the name you’re going with? Little Miss Stacy Pants?”

  “Best I could come up with on short notice,” Lisa replied. “Anyway, Little Miss you-know-who has a government issued Blackberry phone. I know what you’re thinking, ‘isn’t Blackberry dead yet?’ They’re not and you’ll be very glad they aren’t. Want to know why?”

  “Well, since I’m sitting in a restaurant in the middle of a blizzard and really have nothing else to do, I might as well ask, ‘why am I happy Blackberry isn’t dead?’ ”

  “Because, wise ass, it’s a government issued phone, meaning certain people, like maybe some hot Special Agent I may happen to be sleeping with a few nights a week, can access the phone’s location wherever it is in the world. See where I’m going with this?”

  “Jason is going to track Congresswoman Flannigan’s location? Can’t he get in trouble for doing something like that?”

  “First off,” Lisa said pulling her body closer to the table, “drop the whole Congresswoman talk. Stacy Pants is now her official code name. And second, yes, he could get in huge trouble for tracking Stacy Pants, but I promised him a few favors when I get back.”

  “I don’t want to know what favors, do I?”

  “Let’s just say I had to swallow my pride to get him to track her for us.”

  “Disgusting,” Jen said.

  “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. I won’t deliver on my promise anyway,” Lisa said, drawing shallowly from her martini while scanning the men lining the bar. “And Jason probably knows that already. He just likes the idea that he can get me to do something for him that I wouldn’t normally do.”

  “So this means what for us exactly?”

  “He’s going to start sending me her general locations in a bit. I’ll call him when we get near the New Hartford area and then he will start giving us her precise location.”

  “We’ll be able to know exactly where she is and won’t run the risk of running into her. That is fabulous.”

  “First off, and this is just some friendly advice, no one says, ‘fabulous’ any more. Secondly, you’re exactly right. She’ll have no clue we’re watching her unless we want her to know.” Lisa waved over the waitress, ordered another apple martini, along with a salad for her dinner. “Jason also said that his buddy the trooper lives in the town next to New Hartford and is fine with us using his house as our base headquarters. He ended up getting called in to work tomorrow so we won’t have a police escort, but now that we know exactly where Stacy Pants will be, we won’t need any protection.”

  “Probably not,” Jen said. “But if Stacy Pants really is involved in something bad, I’d rather have a cop with me.”

  “Don’t worry, Jen. I can handle a snotty freshman any day of the week.”

  <<<<>>>>

  It was after ten at night before the two friends left the restaurant, made the snowy walk across the parking lot and were back in their shared hotel room. As the two readied themselves for sleep, Lisa checked her messages and saw she had one missed call from Jason and a voice message.

  “Hey, Lisa. She left Columbus at fourteen thirty, then drove to Syracuse, New York. Must have hit the same storm you hit. She stopped at a Comfort Suites in East Syracuse. I’ll send updates in the morning when she’s on the move. Glad you two stopped for the night. If you guys do anything exciting, take pictures! I’ll call or text you updates in the morning.”

  After filling Jen in, Lisa shoved in her Apple-issued ear buds, wished Jen a goodnight, then fell into silence. Jen knew there would be no more discussions taking place in room 326 that night.

  Never one gifted with the ability to fall asleep quickly, Jen retrieved her Kindle ebook reader, navigated through her library and clicked on a Richard E. Douglas book. She was never a fan of science fiction, but Douglas was known for creating average characters who were gifted (or cursed) with unique and powerful abilities. Jen often wondered when her unique gift would be revealed.

  She knew that gift, the “something” that made her different existed, if only on the distant margins of her reality. She always felt there was something that kept her more closed off from others than she wished. Nothing drastic enough that others could notice or would give them cause to assault her with labels like “standoffish,” “strange,” or “thinks she’s better than everyone else.” Whatever it was, her gift was very much a sideline player throughout her life: Always within view but never having an effect on her life.

  It stirred her, however, the moment she met Congresswoman Stacy Flannigan, AKA Stacy Pants. The sideline player stepped, unexpectedly and suddenly, onto the field and gently but firmly insisted on taking an active role. It lasted only for the few minutes Jen was with Flannigan. Then, as quickly as the gift asserted itself, it was gone, back to the sidelines to wait for whatever it was counting down the time to. It left only a vague trace of memories and a slight but lasting tug on her heart. It was an unusual feeling, one that Jen recalled feeling a few times before in her life. But that time with Flannigan, the slight tug and crumbling memories seemed more urgent, more demanding of being noticed. She brushed it off as her nervousness at meeting an actual member of Congress and of finally being part of a powerful team. Though her position was only as Flannigan’s assistant, she knew she would be privy to secrets, to decisions, that might shape the direction of the country.

  But the tug remained.

  It was only when she quieted herself and allowed the foreign, yet familiar feeling to occupy her thoughts that the tug relented. It was telling her something and she knew she had to find a way to listen and to understand her gift’s words.

  In the bed beside her, Jen could hear Lisa’s breathing slowing, growing deeper as she drifted off to sleep. Wishing she had spent the extra few dollars for the self-illuminating Kindle reader and not wanting the light to disturb Lisa, Jen reached for the switch positioned on the bottom of the bedside lamp and turned off the light. As the darkness enveloped the room Jen saw a flash from her Kindle. When she blinked her eyes, the flash took on a clearer form. It was not just one centrally located flash, but several, scattered about and spanning the width and height of her Kindle’s screen. She blinked again, then continued blinking rapidly as the flashes turned into words and letters. The more she blinked, the more distinct and clear the letters became.

  “You…..ar……eA…..se….nd…..e…..r…….Se……..nd……..he…..r……..back”

  Jen flipped the light back on and matched her flashing vision to the book’s page on her reader. Matching locations and comparing the reader’s display to what was flashed to her, she grabbed the pen and notebook that sat on her nightstand, and scribbled “You are a Sender. Send her back.”

  Her gift, it seemed, needed to tell her something.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A thought silenced his screams. It was more of a feeling, a knowing, than just a simple thought. Thoughts, for him, were terrifying. For if his thoughts were allowed to string themselves together, what they might produce could serve up a volley of wrenching torture, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in centuries.

  When he realized it was not only just a feeling but one that held no emotion, he settled himself. The feeling told him that someone was coming. Someone who had no idea about him and who lived in the same realm as he, under the same haze of ignorance and myths as all the others. He was coming, this expected visitor, to bring something to him and this visitor expected that the object he carried would bring about a change. The object his approaching visitor carried was a reminder of what he had shunned in ancient times. It was what he had not chosen to make his.

  H
e pried his eyes open—something he did very seldom—shielding them from the blinding lights with his arm raised above his head. He hated seeing the lights above him for they, too, were reminders. He slammed his eyes closed, unable to bear the brilliance of the lights. Thankful for the distraction of the feeling, he allowed himself a moment of relief when the pain didn’t return.

  “He’s coming to kill me,” he bubbled his words into the warm water that surrounded him. It surrounded him now, but it had not always.

  He settled back into the murk and wondered, with self-hating thoughts, if his visitor would be successful. Could he be successful? Please…

  His thoughts smacked of hope and the twisting resumed.

  He screamed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Mosquitoes. That’s what was to blame for the terror that ravaged the cities of Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. Mosquitoes were also to blame for the calamities the befell the suburbs and towns west of Cleveland and Columbus. Westward was the direction the winds blew the fog clouds the day Badr and his band of followers executed phase one of Henry Winchester’s plan.

  At first, Badr fully intended to have a crop duster spread the concentrated and genetically altered bacteria over the skies of the two cities. But there were two things wrong with that plan, as it turned out. First, finding a crop-dusting pilot who was willing to fly over a city and release an unknown agent was impossible. Badr’s first assistant had to resort to killing the two pilots he met with in order to ensure their silence. Hiring a pilot was not going to be an option.

  The second idea that turned into a “reason against crop dusting,” was to train one of his followers in the finer arts of crop dusting. That would only require learning how to take off, navigate around the cities (and between them) and how to control the release of the fogging agent. Learning to land wasn’t important. A dramatic, Kamikaze-style landing would not only have added to the drama of the day but would also have served to spread whatever remained in the plane’s cargo hold.