Oh Hell No! (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 3) (3 page)

Loriei took out a canister from
her belt and a small tube. She pressed the button and listened to the air suck.
She had to put her finger over the mouth of the tube to test the suction since
she didn’t trust her hearing. The angry dog sounded like it was miles away now.

She leaned down over Danforth and
paused. The chemical smell of beer and other alcohol was thick on him. She
wondered if he had spilled it on himself when he fell. Then, even through her
mask, she could smell it stronger each time he exhaled.

Loriei leaned in with the canister
and extraction nozzle.

One of his arms flopped over away
from his chest. With his hands flexing open and closed, two of his fingers
caught the eye hole of her mask and yanked it away from her face. The rubbery
plastic slapped the ground with the sound similar to shedding skin.

Danforth’s muscles flexed into
tight cords past the ends of his sleeves and up along his neck, but he was
unable to move from the sedative. She saw the strength of the former soldier
that Brady Danforth was and according to the journal, would be again. His eyes
widened and his lips pulled back from his teeth as he looked up into her
exposed face.

As she feared when she stared down
at the picture of the model on her way back to the laboratory, he did not see
one of his descendants in her face. He did not even see her as human anymore.
She was a monster attacking him in his home in the night.

The dog gave two more barks and then
dropped to whimpers. Loriei blinked at moisture forming around her eyes. The
animal was barking and whimpered because he cared about this man and his
safety. Loriei wasn’t sure that anyone in the world – her time nor any other –
cared about her that much anymore. If she died here and was incinerated in the
past, those in the lab would be disappointed by the failure, but not really at
the loss of her as a person.

She whispered. “None of them care
for me as much as that dog does.”

Danforth narrowed his eyes and his
jaw relaxed.

She heard the violin again. She
turned and looked at the black screen of the television thinking it was back
on, but it was blank. She listened to see if it was the whimper of the dog
through the ringing in her ears. She heard it again in a long, strained note
and realized it was a train. Her father played a similar sound for her when she
was little so she would know what the world used to be like. That was why the
violin had drawn her out of her shadow mind out on the streets – her father’s
train recordings.

Salvo said, “Are you okay? Are you
hurt?”

She startled at the sound of his
voice. “Yes … I mean, no … fine.”

A part of her feared that time
would suddenly collapse the trailer on top of them to ensure their failure. She
looked up and saw the bullet hole.

She leaned down and pressed the
suction nozzle against his head at the line between his bare scalp and the
remaining hair. She smelled something different from the beer and realized it
was urine from Danforth wetting himself on the floor. The canister lit up on
the display that they had a sample.

She pulled the nozzle away
revealing a purple mark on the skin of his head. “Let’s go.”

They stood and made for the door.
Corsin held the door. “Should we move him to the bed or something?”

Loriei shook her head without
looking back as the dog started barking again. “He’ll be safer, if we just
leave him where he is until he recovers.”

She looked down at the broken
glass under her boots before walking out and down the stairs to the violin
sounds of the distant train whistle.

***

The light dissipated and they were
standing under the same pine tree only in the daylight. Loriei waited to catch
her breath as she held the canister up to her eyes. The display indicated one
sample within. It was the same louse she had pulled from Danforth on their last
trip to the past, but now it had the spliced gene that would spread through the
population and destroy the rise of the super lice.

She felt the stir against her
scalp as if her flock knew what she was trying to do.

“We should have gotten more than
one sample,” Salvo said.

Loriei looked at the taller man
with the camera mounted on his forehead. She had many things she wanted to say
in response, but knew they would all be recorded. She just said, “It will be
enough. Let’s go. We need to plant this ahead of the gravity wave.”

As they walked along the fence,
Corsin asked, “Why are we cutting it this close?”

“The destruction from the wave
passing through the Earth will cover our escape,” she said. “And that is when
lice began to spread. We need our modified gene introduced into the gene pool
when it won’t end up treated.”

“Treated?” Corsin asked.

Loriei nodded. “Ancient lice could
be killed using a chemical bath available for purchase.”

“I can’t imagine.” Corsin shook
his head. Loriei saw movement under his cap from Corsin’s flock.

She realized the dog wasn’t
barking. She looked over the gate and saw the stake and collar, but no dog.
Loriei scanned the lot and saw the trailer tied down with heavy chains. The
truck was chained down by a crisscross of chains as well. Danforth had gotten
the news and was prepared for the coming wave.

Loriei whispered. “Be ready. I
think the dog is inside with him.”

Corsin brought out the syringe
with the sedative-paralytic inside.

The gate creaked as she pushed it
open. They approached the stairs, but heard no television this time. The door
was covered with taped down cardboard where the glass hand been.

Loriei moved to her knees on the
wood platform and took hold of the handle. It was warm from the sunlight. She
couldn’t see through the cardboard. “Be ready.”

Corsin moved up beside her.

Loriei tried to turn the door
handle, but it was locked. She then activated the high temperature device and
pointed to the handle. The knob started glowing silently.

The hot handle fell inside the
trailer and Loriei opened the door quickly, hitting the wall violently.

Danforth shouted. “Oh, hell no!”

He was chained down to bolts
embedded in the floor. He began fumbling with the locks around his waist.

Corsin charged in and toward
Danforth.

The dog barked from another room
deeper in the trailer and Loriei heard his body slamming against something. She
hoped it was a door.

Danforth broke loose from the
chains and pulled open a lockbox on the floor. As Corsin held out the syringe. Danforth
with one hand grabbed his cheap cell phone and started taking pictures of the
invaders. With his other hand, he drew out his gun and fired twice into the
center of Corsin’s chest dropping him to the floor. The syringe rolled out of
his hand up against the base of the kitchen counter.

Danforth growled. “I’ve been sober
since the day you creeps left. I never miss a target when I’m sober.”

White light surrounded Corsin’s
body and Danforth covered his eyes with his forearm. Loriei bolted for the syringe.
The light dropped leaving a black scorch across the floor.

Danforth brought the gun up. Salvo
grabbed Loriei around the waist and rolled with her behind the recliner. The
gun went off punching a hole through the floor where she had been. Another tore
through the leather above them blasting out matted stuffing.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

Salvo said, “Because you will save
us all.”

The dog barked and whimpered from
deeper within the trailer.

He ran out and grabbed the syringe
before diving past the counter. Danforth fired and blood erupted from Salvo’s
leg. He slid leaving a bloody smear across the linoleum.

Loriei felt gravity go. She lifted
off the floor. The recliner spun in the air. Salvo and Danforth lifted off the
floor. Blood ribboned out from the wound on Salvo’s leg in a manner that was
almost beautiful. The television and cabinet pulled against their bungee cords,
but held to the hooks screwed into the floor. One crushed beer can floated up
from behind the cabinet.

Salvo kicked against the chained
refrigerator with his good leg. Glass jars jostled against one another inside.
He held out the syringe as he floated across above the counter. Salvo swept
envelopes and coupon flyers out of his path in the air.

Danforth raised the gun and fired.
His body rocked backward punching a hole in the wood paneling and he grunted.
Salvo took the shot to the head blasting matter out the back of his skull
through the air. A giant louse crawled out of the hole in the cap before white
light engulfed Salvo and the creature.

Loriei pulled off her wrist band
to buy herself time even if she was shot.

Dark ash floated out where Salvo
had been. The syringe was gone with him.

Loriei kicked off the recliner and
sailed toward Danforth. She held out the canister and he brought up the gun.
She braced herself for the shot and concentrated on planting the louse anyway.
The gun clicked empty. She reached for his scalp and sprayed the canister. The
louse was now on Danforth’s scalp.

Danforth immediately put his hand
on his head, searching for anything extraordinary, but found nothing.

Loriei heard the violin note
again. Through the pain, she listened for the train, but then realized it was
the trailer pulling against the chains.

The metal chains on the trailer
snapped vibrated through the entire structure. The trailer tipped up onto its
end and Danforth lost his grip on her and the gun.

She saw him rub his head near the
faded, purple spot. The drawers opened and utensils poured out into the air.
The television broke loose with the bungies which slingshot across the room.

A plastic kennel with the dog
whimpering inside floated past her. Danforth grabbed the kennel and clutched it
to his body.

A velvet picture of an elephant
tumbled past her from the back room and scattered the floating utensils. A
model train drifted by her in pieces. Loriei was getting weaker. She let the
canister go.

She saw the rubber mask that had
hidden her face on their last visit. It stared at her with empty eyes as it
drifted through Salvo’s ashes.

Then for the first time in her
life, she felt the itch on her head subsiding. The plan worked and the mutated lice
were gone. There was no tingling in her head or interference in her thoughts. She
felt as if her eyes were suddenly uncovered. There was a realization of being
awakened, a happiness of being alive. A sentiment of love inundated her. Love
for everything around her. She closed her eyes, in an attempt to keep this
feeling for a few more seconds.

But she had a job to finish.

Loriei put the wristband back on.
She said, “Sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused.”

She pulled the snap cord and was
surrounded by light.

Brady Danforth clutched the kennel
to his chest and kept whispering. “It’s going to be alright … It’s going to be
alright … It’s going to be alright …”

He wasn’t sure if he was talking
to the dog or himself.

The canister floated past him and
he saw the lit display read: One live specimen.

“What specimen?” He whispered
through the floating debris.

A massive pine tree slammed
through the wall crumpling the trailer.

He held on as the trailer impacted
the ground again and fell back level with the tree speared through the side. As
he floated back to the floor objects fell around him. An empty beer can rolled
and stopped close to him. He whispered. “Don’t start drinking again … Don’t
start drinking again … Don’t start drinking again …”

***

Other
existing and future works from the author:

Pulse: When Gravity Fails
-
When the Alpha Centauri star system
begin to collapse gravity waves reach our planet, creating strange phenomena
around the globe leaving the people who are affected by them wondering what in
the world is going on. Objects are disappearing, flying into space, hovering
above ground, and swirling vortices appear in the seas. Gravity seems to come
and go at unexpected intervals. No one can figure out what is taking place on
Earth. A scientist in an isolated observatory sees clues that tell him what is
happening to the world may be bigger and more deadly than a few earthquakes and
a few floating objects. Dr. Paulo Restrepo will have to race against time and
the doubts of a world used to gravity behaving the same everywhere at every
time. By the time he figures out the cause and what that means for the final
approaching event, it might be too late, but he has to try.

The Quantum Brain (Pulse series #2)
- free ebook available for download on smashwords.com. When an IT technicians
finds out that a great disaster is going to strike earth, he uses the
opportunity to commit a crime that will set him for life and comes up with an
ingenious and infallible plan.

Or so he thought.

Oh Hell
No! (Pulse series #3)
- the struggle
of people from the future going back to our time to try to correct a terrible
mistake.

The
Quantum Brain Returns (Pulse series #4)
- after losing their first prototype, a technology company recreates an updated
version of the Quantum brain with disastrous results.

Home
(Pulse series #5)
- an American
doctor ends up stranded in the Middle East.
Saci
(Pulse series #6)
- tells the story
about an African entity that goes after abusive slave owners.
About the author:

About the author:
John Freitas is an author of speculative fiction
that lives in Southeast Texas. He has a background in electronics and computer
science.

Published works:

Pulse: When Gravity Fails
The Quantum Brain
Oh Hell No!
On the web scifibookseries.com