Rebel Fleet (3 page)

=4=

They led me to the car I’d seen them drive up in. That had been damned near an hour ago, and I couldn’t help but feel proud I’d kept them running around the hospital for that long. It wasn’t even a large building.

The brute was in the backseat next to me. The Navy guy was in the front passenger seat, while the third man drove.

The driver was the smallest and the meanest looking of the bunch. He was as silent as a stone. He didn’t even look in the rearview mirror at me when I tried to catch his eye.

“So,” I said, “are you guys all stationed at Pearl?”

“I am,” the Commander said.

“I didn’t catch anyone’s name,” I prompted.

“That’s because we didn’t give you any names, fool,” said the brute sitting next to me.

“Let’s be civil,” the Navy man said. “He’s new.”

“He doesn’t act like it,” the brute insisted. “He acts too smooth, like he knows the game already. That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve been tipped off, haven’t you Blake?”

This series of statements baffled me, but I didn’t let that show.

“Of course I know,” I said, figuring they were more likely to talk openly if they thought I already understood what was happening. “Did you think this was all an accident?”

The brute lowered his already low brow. He turned in his seat and put his arm up on the headrest behind me. He stared at me intimidatingly. This was effective, but I pretended not to care.

“You’re a pilot, aren’t you?” he asked. “Flying pukes always think they’re better than the rest of us.”

“I didn’t know you’d served,” I said.

“Marines. Two tours back in—”

“Shut up,” said the Commander from the front seat. “Don’t you know when you’re being pumped, you moron?”

The brute looked pissed, but he
did
shut up. I gave him a little smirk, hoping to get him talking again. His face reddened, and he balled up his fists, but he kept quiet.

I turned my attention to the Commander. He was obviously the man in charge.

“What happened to Doctor Chang?” I asked.

“That’s none of your concern, Blake.”

“Why? Did he fail the blood test?”

For some reason, this statement touched off a serious reaction. The brooding driver veered off the road, taking a violent turn onto a side street. As best I could tell, the road went nowhere. We were heading up the side of a mountain—which pretty much described what happened when you turned inland from the shoreline on any island in the Hawaiian chain.

It was farm country or some kind of nature preserve. Then again, as I pondered the mental map in my head, it might have been part of an airfield owned by the military. That didn’t surprise me.

“What are you doing?” the Commander asked the driver.

The driver, who had been quiet all along, sneered at him.

“This is bullshit,” he said. I was surprised to hear he had a lower-class British accent. “I’m done with it. We’ll finish this and move on. Just like we agreed.”

“Blake is a Navy man, and he hasn’t taken the blood test yet,” insisted the other. “This isn’t officially sanctioned!”

“Piss off. In the end, it’s all going to turn into a shit-show. We might as well start right now.”

“Control your sym, Dalton!” the Navy guy ordered.

“Are you threatening me, Jones?”

By this time, I was becoming concerned. I had some names to go with their faces, but that wasn’t making me any happier.

The many ideas I’d been entertaining about the nature of my near-term fate had been vanishing one by one. Quarantine? A term of imprisonment? A straight-out killing to hide a secret? None of these were fitting.

And what was a
sym
, anyway? Did I really want to know?

These men, I realized now, were no more on my side than I was on theirs. Only the Navy man seemed to have any kind of compassion.

Dalton drove like a madman. He took every turn at top speed, throwing us around. That gave me an idea.

The next time he took a left, I threw myself into the brute sitting next to me in the backseat.

“Get the fuck off me!”

“Sorry,” I said, even as I quietly unbuckled his seatbelt.

He shoved me away violently, banging my head against the steel frame of the car.

I caught a lucky break then. Possibly, it was the only one I would get for this entire long day. While he was fumbling for his seatbelt, good old Dalton took another hard turn.

Reaching across the brute, I popped his door open and shoved him
hard
.

Up until that point, I hadn’t displayed any kind of strength. Like I said, I’m a man with a powerful build. Still, I wouldn’t have liked to arm-wrestle this marine, but then again, I might have surprised him.

As it turned out, I overdid it. The combination of Dalton’s crazy driving, my hard shove and the lack of a seatbelt, launched that bastard right out of the car like he’d been fired from a cannon.

For a split-second, he seemed to hang out there in open space, still in a sitting position. He threw out his arms then vanished. I couldn’t help taking a wincing glance behind the car as I watched him go into a tumble.

“Man overboard!” I shouted.

“You crazy fuck!” Dalton snarled. He slammed on the brakes as I’d expected him to do.

I recovered first and vaulted out of the car. My belt was already off, so I was able to get out of the vehicle before the others.

A gun barked three times. Ducking and turning, I decided to hug the car’s trunk. I didn’t have time to run off into the palm trees that lined the street.

Another gun fired, but it didn’t seem to be in my direction. There was no sting, no sparks from the car or the asphalt.

What I saw when I took a peek over the trunk lid shocked me. Both men had guns out—but they weren’t shooting at me. They were shooting at each other.

Jones was clutching his side, which was spouting blood.  His uniform was wrecked. He sagged down against the car door with a look of shock on his face.

Dalton turned his grin, and his gun, toward me.

“Right,” he said. “It’s your turn, mate. You’re whale-shit now. Isn’t that what you Navy buggers say?”

I hugged the trunk of the car, skirting around it to avoid him. My plan was to get to the lieutenant commander’s gun.

Dalton wasn’t that stupid, unfortunately. Rather than chasing me around the bush—or in this case, the Ford—he moved around the front of the vehicle to stand over the dying man’s body. He put one more round into him to make sure, and his victim slumped.

Laughing, he turned back to hunt for me. I was desperately trying to get to the driver’s side door to see if he’d left the keys inside—he hadn’t.

Dalton stepped close to look at me.

“Too bad,” he said, aiming his gun at my face. “You, I was gaining respect for. These others were too straight. Too dumb to win in the end.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but when he tightened his grip on that pistol, I said the word every murder victim says at the end: “Wait!”

Boom!

I heard it, even though I shouldn’t have.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Dalton spun around and went down. My first thought was that he’d been nailed by the brute from the backseat, but that guy was nowhere in sight. We’d left him a quarter mile back down the road.

Then my head snapped around, and I saw Commander Jones.

He had his gun up again. I was surprised to see that he was alive. Maybe he’d faked his death, or maybe he’d gotten a second wind. I wasn’t sure which it was, but he was the one who’d shot Dalton down.

I heard sirens in the distance. I walked around the car and moved to Jones. I squatted beside him. His eyes followed me, and his breath whistled from the holes in his lungs.

“Why’d you shoot your partner?” I asked him.

“I’m out of this contest,” he wheezed, “but I wanted the winner to be Navy—like me. Don’t be a dick, Blake.”

“You guys are bat-shit crazy,” I said, shaking my head, “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but thanks for saving my ass, anyway.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t saved you from anything. I’ve cursed you. Remember: don’t trust anyone. When they come, you’ll find they don’t die easy. You should cut out the heart, take off the head, or maybe burn them to be sure. Hell, feed the enemy to pigs and turn them into shit.”

I squinted into the eyes of what I was now certain must be a madman.

“You’ve got to
run
,” Jones told me. “Throw away your cell. Take this car and run. Don’t look back. Try not to listen to your sym until you’re sure you need it to stay alive. Sometimes… it lies to you.”

“You’re not making any sense,” I said, “but I’ve got to take you back to the hospital.” With a grunt, I put my hands under his armpits and tried to lift him into the passenger seat.

He surprised me by putting his gun in my face.

“No, Blake. Leave me, or I’ll shoot you, so help me. Get the hell out of here.”

Throwing up my hands, I shook my head. There was no pleasing some people. After taking the keys from Dalton, I climbed into the Ford. I started up the car and drove away at speed.

Looking back at that moment later, if I had it to do over again, I think would have turned around and run them all over several times.

Just to be sure.

=5=

The car wasn’t something I could keep. Neither was my cellphone. But I figured I should make one last play before I ditched them both.

“Vice Admiral Shaw, please,” I told the Pentagon switchboard at the Naval Intelligence office.

“There’s no one listed under that name.”

“This is Commander Jones on an unsecured line. I’ve got an emergency.”

“Hold please.”

I waited. I knew they were locating me, but I didn’t care. Making random turns onto dusty back roads one after another, I crossed the island while I waited.

Finally, the line went live again.

“Your codename, please?” asked another voice.

“I don’t have any codename. I want to talk to Shaw.”

“There’s no one here by that name.”

“If Shaw wants to know what happened to his team, he should talk to me now. This is his last chance. I’m ditching everything in five minutes.”

“Hold please.”

Groaning, I did as I was told. About when I’d decided I’d had enough, the phone spoke to me again.

“This is Shaw. Who is this?”

“Lt. Leo Blake.”

“Blake?” he asked, sounding surprised. “Where are you?”

“I’m driving the car your three goons loaned to me.”

“They
loaned
it to you? Are you saying you’ve stolen government property? Blake, this is—”

“Cut the shit… uh, sir,” I said. “Your men went crazy, and they tried to kill me—at least, I think that was their plan.”

“Listen to me carefully,” Shaw said. “You might have a disease which can affect the mind. I want you to return to the hospital. You were never tested properly. Everything will be explained when you get there.”

I laughed. “Right. Like how you explained things to Doctor Chang? Why’s he dead? What did he do that was so wrong?”

I was fishing for information, and he went quiet for a moment. Then, like every good sucker, he took the bait.

“Chang had the disease, too. It’s very dangerous. You need to report back to the hospital immediately.”

“I feel fine. What’s this disease called? What are the symptoms?”

“It doesn’t have a formal name yet. It’s an infestation by a symbiotic organism. A parasite that affects the mind. Victims endure paranoia and violent tendencies. Hysterical strength and delusions take over in the advanced stages.”

That rang true to me. Jones had talked about a “sym” and how it could make you crazy. The thought of having a parasite in my body made my skin crawl. But I didn’t let any of this come through in my voice.

“Come to think of it,” I said, “Dalton did foam at the mouth a little. Jones had to put him down like a dog.”

Admiral Shaw suddenly became angry. “Where are my operatives, Blake? Give me a full report, that’s an order.”

“I don’t even know if you’re a real admiral,” I said. “At the switchboard, they said there wasn’t anyone in the building by that name. I’m thinking of going to the media with this entire story.”

Shaw chuckled evilly. It was an unexpected reaction.

“Think you can take them all, is that it, boy?” he asked. “Go ahead and try. Paint your butt red and moon the bull. You’ll be dead by noon tomorrow as they scramble over one another to get to you.”

Thinking about the bloodlust in Dalton, I wondered if he could be right. In any case, it didn’t sound encouraging. I decided to change tactics.

“I’m going to talk to you no matter who you are, Shaw, out of the goodness of my heart. The three men you sent after me are all dead—except maybe for the marine. He fell out of the car doing about seventy, so he might still be breathing.”

“I don’t believe it… You took them
all
out? That’s astounding. Have you morphed in some way? Were you infected earlier than you let on?”

Morphed?

“Um… no,” I said.

“This was all a setup, wasn’t it?” Shaw went on, his voice rising. “You’re a finalist playing for someone else, a predator preying on others by pretending you’re weak!”

“Damn, more crazy talk about these killings like they’re part of some kind of game. To answer your accusations, I’m not a player in your little contest. I don’t even know the rules. I just got lucky and pulled a few fast moves. Jones gave me a break before he died, too. That’s all it was.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not true. If you’ve survived this long, you’ve got to be good, whether you know it or not.”

“This conversation has to come to an end soon,” I said. “I can’t let you track me down.”

He sighed heavily. “You’ve put me in a very bad position.”

I rolled my eyes at that one. He wasn’t the one running for his life, trapped on an island in the Pacific.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but five people have died around me in the last twelve hours. I’m having trouble crying for you, Admiral.”

“An insubordinate smart-ass as well… I’d read that in your file, but I had no idea it was this bad.”

“Any last words before I hang up?” I asked.

“Yes. Stay alive. You’re one of the last on our side—one of the last from our military, in any case. It’s imperative that you stay alive for now.”

“I’ll do my damnedest, sir.”

“When you get to a safe spot, call this number again. Use the codename ‘Orion.’ Have you got that?”

“Orion. Got it.”

I hung up and threw the phone out the window. Then I did a U-turn and headed for a beach area I knew well. I ditched the car in a vacant lot filled with junk and walked away in my sandals.

By the time I’d walked a mile, I found myself in familiar territory. That was the good thing about living on an island. Pretty quickly, you got to know your way around. After all, Maui was less than forty miles long.

Distantly behind me, I heard sirens and the like. I was sure somebody was upset about all the carnage I’d left behind me.

Feeling a little shaky, I walked toward my former home. To be safe, I passed it along the beach side first.

The cops were already there. I kept walking along the shoreline, throwing rocks into the surf like I didn’t even notice. I carefully avoided looking at the place, and I knew I could never go back there.

Damn.
I was going to be hard-up without any money. My wallet was worse than useless now. If I used an ATM card, every red light in D. C. would begin blinking.

Hungrily, I thought about the hollow leg of my bed, where I’d stashed several hundred bucks. Shaking my head, I had to let it all go.

Walking down the beach with nothing but the clothes on my back, I began mentally listing the people of means in my life that I could contact.

The list was thin, but there were a few souls on it who might lend a hand. I spent the rest of the day hitting up every one of them, and I collected a grand total of one hundred and eighty-eight dollars. That wasn’t a lot, especially in Hawaii.

Night fell at last, and it was a relief when it did. I knew it would be harder for them to find me in the dark. Besides that, I’d already gotten a sunburn despite having purloined a straw hat and a long-sleeved shirt. Even my toes in my sandals were stinging.

With a sigh, I headed back to the beachfront hotels. I knocked on Kim’s door at about ten, even though I figured she might be out partying somewhere.

To my surprise she opened it, doubtlessly after checking me out through the lens of her peephole at length.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“I’m hurting,” I said. “I need help.”

Kim looked me up and down.

“You’re sunburned,” she said at last.

“Yeah.”

“Have you never heard of sunscreen?”

I shook my head, took off my hat, and held it in both my hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said, staring down at my stolen hat. “Sorry to trouble you. I’ll go now.”

Slowly, I turned away, but she sighed and opened the door wider.

“Come on in.”

Looking as sad as any dog that’s ever been caught whizzing on the furniture, I stepped inside. She talked about Jason and the events of last night. We both agreed his death had been a shock. I told her nothing of having killed two or three assailants since then—I didn’t think it would help my case.

Forty minutes later, she took me out to buy me a burger. I ate three, as I hadn’t eaten all day long. It felt great to be doing something other than walking the streets.

Finally, knowing I needed help, I told her of the day’s events. In my heavily edited version of the story, I’d escaped the men in the car without violence. I was merely a victim being chased across the island by merciless thugs.

“Can’t you call your parents?” she asked me.

“Nope,” I said. “I don’t want to get them involved. What if these crazy people go after them, too?”

She stared at me in concern. “You came to
me,
though. You didn’t have any problem dragging me into this mess.”

“Admiral Shaw doesn’t know about you. They don’t know you might be infected with—whatever this is.”

Kim licked her lips. I could see her worrying brain chewing the situation over. She didn’t like the taste.

“What if they come after me? What am I supposed to do? Should I cut my trip short and run back to the mainland?”

Something in her tone made me look up from my second bag of fries. I could see her eyes were wide, fearful. She was freaking out a little.

“Just stay away from hospitals. They seem to find people that way.”

“But what if I get sick?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I pulled Jason out of the water and gave him mouth-to-mouth, and I still feel good. You’re not infected. You’re fine.”

“Maybe you’ve got some kind of natural resistance,” she said, winding up that long dark hair of hers with a finger. “Maybe I’m the one that they’re really looking for.”

“Why would you think that?” I asked her.

She stared at me again for a time, then suddenly smiled.

“No reason,” she said. “You must be tired, right? Let’s go back to the hotel.”

She paid the bill, and we left. I wanted to leave the tip, but I was just too damned poor. I felt kind of bad about that. I told myself that when this mess was all cleared up I would get a job and pay off my debts.

“This is the last week of your vacation, right?” I asked her.

“Yeah. But Gwen took off. She’s flying back home tomorrow. Seeing Jason die—it was too much for her. I’m alone on the island.”

“Thinking of going home too?”

“Maybe. Let’s go have a drink. You look like you could use one.”

We had several. They were strong, and by midnight, I was happy for the first time in twenty four hours. Arm-in-arm, we headed back to her place.

Kim wasn’t as drunk as I was. She’d been nursing her drinks. She smiled vaguely as we collapsed on her bed.

I reached for her, and at first, she recoiled. But then, she slowly relented. We made love again. It felt great to be alive.

It had been a long day, and after we’d satisfied each other, I passed out. I didn’t even take off my sandals. I was totally drained.

Just as I was beginning to dream, I heard a strange sound. Sort of a clank.

I opened one eye. There, standing over me with a wild look of fury on her face, was Kim. She had a long metal floor lamp in her hands, and she was holding it like a batter swinging for the fences. With a grunt, she swung the lamp’s heavy base down at me.

Clearly, she wanted to bash my skull in.