Genesis (8 page)

“Emily. This is Provost Fisher, please open up.” Three more dull fist thuds against the door followed.

Thor started to bark.

“Stay here,” Emily told Thor and Rhiannon as she slipped her .45 into its holster and stepped into the hall, closing the bedroom door behind her. A trio of thoughts manifested themselves unbidden in her mind as she walked toward the front door:
What if I’m crazy like Valentine seems to think? What if Fisher’s here with news about Adam? What if they have found him?
Well then, this would be one occasion when she would be more than happy to apologize to Valentine. Her heart skipped a beat or three as she released the latch and opened the door.

Fisher stood in the doorway, his face stern, the two guards who had been in her apartment standing on either side of him, arms folded across their chests.

“What’s going—” Emily began to say.

“Get her weapon,” Fisher ordered. The two goons leapt at Emily, grabbing her and pushing her face-first into the wall. One twisted her arm up behind her back while the other grabbed the pistol from its holster on her hip.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Emily demanded through teeth gritted in pain. “Get your Goddamn hands off of me.”

“Emily Baxter, on the orders of the Point Loma council, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of your son, Adam. Please don’t resist.”

The sound of the bedroom door opening was closely followed by a deep growl. Thor padded out of the bedroom, his teeth bared in a menacing growl, Rhiannon right behind him.

“Shoot the dog,” Fisher ordered the man holding Emily’s pistol, a hint of panic in his voice.

“No!” Rhiannon screamed and grabbed Thor’s collar, pulling him back even as he lunged toward the man who had Emily’s arm pinned up behind her back.

Emily felt the grip on her arm relax as the fat guard holding her reflexively backed away from the snarling malamute. This was her one chance. She slipped her arm out of his grip, twisted to face him, drew her head back, and drove her forehead as hard as she could into the man’s nose. She felt the satisfying crack of his nose shattering like the shell of an egg and a spray of blood splatter across her face. The man screamed in pain, releasing her as both hands flew to his face. He staggered backward, moaning in shock.

“For Christ’s sake, get her,” Fisher yelled, pointing at Emily.

The blond guard, Emily’s .45 still in his hand, looked stunned. He had her weapon raised and pointed down the corridor at Thor, but Rhiannon had positioned herself between the dog and Emily’s attackers.

Emily grabbed his gun hand, twisted around until she had his wrist locked, the gun pointed at the far wall and his elbow moving in the opposite direction, then applied all her weight to his wrist. The man screamed in pain as his elbow hyperextended, ligaments stretching like pieces of rubber.

Her pistol clattered to the floor.

If she could just grab the gun, she’d have a chance to seize control of this mess. She released the man, expecting his reactions to be impaired by pain, but he had enough of his wits left to realize what she was attempting and kicked the .45, sending it skittering across the corridor carpet where it bounced against a skirting board and disappeared through Rhiannon’s open bedroom door.

Emily shoulder-barged him while he was off balance and sent him face-first into the wall, before he tumbled to the floor.

“Get in the bedroom,” Emily yelled at Rhiannon as she turned back to face her attackers.

She saw the pistol descending toward her and tried to dodge away, but it was too late, the butt of Fisher’s pistol caught her square on her right temple.

The last thing Emily sensed was Rhiannon’s high-pitched scream, then her universe disappeared into blackness.

Adam was five years old. Emily didn’t know how she knew this, but she did. He was asleep on the bed, the blankets pulled up to his chin, his hair spread out around his head like a halo.

He was beautiful.

Emily leaned in and kissed his forehead. She placed the pillow over his face and pushed down hard.

“No
!
”
Emily cried out, and instantly regretted it. The yell rang her head like a bell.

Where the fuck was she?
She raised her head, looked around, but didn’t recognize the room. Her mind was full of fog and confusion, her thoughts running from her each time she tried to focus on them. She re
membered something about a fight, but the why of it eluded her.

Emily felt metal beneath her fingers. She was lying on some kind
of a gurney, a hospital gurney with collapsible metal sidebars to
stop
patients from rolling out of them. A gray blanket lay crumpled
below her knees. She sat up, reached to caress the throbbing spot on the side of her head, and almost dislocated her wrist, yelping at the
sudden pain as her arm was abruptly stopped. Emily stared at the
metal handcuffs securing her left arm to the gurney’s railing.

What the hell?

And then it all came back to her: the knock at the door. The three men. The fight.

Those bastards!

“She’s awake.” Emily looked for where the voice had come from, but her eyes were still blurry, her head swimming. Each time she moved she felt as though she were going to throw up. God! She hoped she didn’t have a concussion. She tried to ask who was there, but all that came out was a scratchy croak, her throat as dry as sand.

A shape began to materialize beyond the bars—bars? Where the hell was she? Her eyes gradually began to focus, and she could now make out the shape and features of Fisher.

Jesus! That motherfucker!
Now she remembered everything. He was the one who had hit her. So much for being a stand-up guy.

Her eyes swept the room. She was in the brig, she realized now. They had knocked her out and brought her here while she was unconscious. Not only was she a big-enough threat that they had to throw her in the brig, they also needed to handcuff her to the gurney they had brought her in on too. Like she was Harry fucking Houdini or something.

A second shape appeared from beyond the edge of her cell. Valentine! The queen bitch herself.

“Hello, Emily. How are you feeling?”

“Fuck you,” Emily tried to yell, but it came out as a mumbled mess, but by the dismissive smile on Valentine’s face, Emily’s sentiment had been made abundantly clear.

Emily sank back down onto the gurney, her chest heaving, her head throbbing.

“Why don’t we get Mizz Baxter some water,” Valentine said.

A key turned in the latch of the cell gate, and then a man was standing over her.

“Here,” the voice said, shoving a red plastic cup of water under her nose. It was the blond guard who had come to arrest her earlier. Emily could see a bruise, purple and angry, on the side of his face where she had clocked him. But it was the look in his eyes that worried her. Cold. Angry. This was not a happy man.

She took the water from his hand and drank it down in two deep gulps. It was warm but dear God it was
so
good. She could already feel the tightness in her head beginning to loosen.

“More,” she said. The blond guard looked at Valentine, who nodded. Grudgingly he brought a second cup.

Emily looked at her feet. What the hell? The laces from both her sneakers were missing.

“Is this really necessary?” she said, rattling the handcuffs against the metal security bar of the gurney.

“You were unconscious when we took you to the infirmary,” said Valentine. “Dr. Hubbard insisted that you be treated there. We wanted to make sure you wouldn’t try to harm yourself . . . or anyone else.”

Well, that explained where her laces had gone. Emily shook her head in disgust. “Right, because I have a history of that.”

Fisher spoke next. “Emily, where is your son?”

“What do you mean? I’ve already told you where he is.”

“You told us that an alien spirited him away from a locked room
in the middle of a heavily armed camp. My men searched your apartment and found no indication of any kind of break-in or—”

“Because they’re fucking aliens,” Emily interjected.

“—any signs of a struggle. We searched the entire compound and the perimeter, and, again, my men found no sign of Adam.”

“Well maybe you need to employ better men,” Emily said, shifting her gaze to the guard leaning against the cell bars.

The blond guard pushed away from the bars, his fists balled.

“Curtis!” snapped Valentine. The man froze and stepped back to his position.
Interesting,
thought Emily,
that it is Valentine and not Fisher issuing commands here.

“As I was saying, Emily, we have found no evidence that your son was abducted by any kind of exterior force. Which leads me to my final question: How did you dispose of your son’s body?”

“What?”
Emily gasped. “I didn’t harm my son. You think I’d hurt him?”

“Here’s what we think happened, Ms. Baxter,” said Valentine, stepping closer to the bars of her cell. “We think that the last few years have finally caught up to you. That your delusions of an alien menace somehow being responsible for the devastation we see beyond the safety of Point Loma has slowly grown over the time since the red rain first fell. We think that your husband’s willingness to leave you and your son behind was the final straw.”

“You are out of your Goddamn minds.”

“We think that in a fit of paranoia, you killed your boy, strangled him in his crib, and then took his body and dumped it in the ocean.”

Emily was stunned almost into silence. “That’s your story?” she said eventually. “And you think
I’m
the crazy one.”

Valentine stepped closer, grasping the cell bars with both hands. “Why don’t you just make it easy on yourself and your family—what there is left of it, of course—and admit it.”

“You are out of your minds. Fisher, for God’s sake, you don’t believe any of this, do you?”

Fisher just stared back at her, his arms folded across his chest.

“You believe her? Jesus! She’s making this shit up, because she wants to frame me. Can’t you see that?” Even as she said the words, Emily realized how paranoid she sounded.

Valentine smiled, the bait she had laid for Emily taken. “Yes, of course that’s what’s happening. I’m setting you up, because . . . ?” She left the question hanging. “Because I don’t like you? I see you as a threat to some plan I have schemed? Or . . . or maybe I’m working for the aliens? Yes, I’m sure that’s it.”

Curtis cackled to himself.

“That’s enough!” Fisher snapped. He stepped closer to the bars, took a deep breath, and said, “Emily Baxter: I hereby charge you with the abduction, murder, and illegal disposal of your son, Adam Baxter-MacAlister. You will be held here until such time as a jury of your peers decides your fate.”

Emily shook her head in disbelief. “And if I’m found guilty?”

“The punishment for murder is death, Mizz Baxter,” said Valentine. “The punishment for murder has always been death.”

Fisher nodded at Curtis. The guard pulled the metal gate closed behind him.

“Curtis will be standing guard. If there’s anything you want, ask him,” said Fisher, then both he and Valentine turned and vanished down the corridor.

The guard lingered for a second, watching Emily, then he smiled a dark, lascivious smile and he was gone too.