The Meridians

The

Meridians

by

Michaelbrent Collings

Copyright © 2010 by Michaelbrent Collings

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author. For information send request to [email protected].

website: www.michaelbrentcollings.com

email: [email protected]

Cover image used under license by Shutterstock and Shutterstock.com.

DEDICATION

To...

Orson Scott Card, who inspired this book by telling me I could do better...

My family, for putting up with some VERY long hours at the computer...

and to Laura, FTAAE.

***

1.
***

Adrian Vedstedder had been known by many names in his life. As a man who contracted to do certain things that others could not or would not do, he had to be willing and able to switch names and identities at the slightest hint of danger. But though he had possessed no fewer than twenty names in his life - all of them real, all of them supported by legitimate identification cards tied to real social security numbers, for Adrian Vedstedder only purchased the best when he was buying something for himself - though he had been known by many names and had had to reinvent himself many times, never had he lost sight of who he really was.

Adrian Vedstedder was a killer. And he loved his job.

Today promised to be a good day; a day that marked the start of a new contract. He got an email on his special account, the one that was based out of a server and a network located in one of the smaller European countries. The email simply gave a dollar figure, as most of them did.

The amount of money was more than enough, so Adrian emailed back, describing the location of a dead drop in a nearby park and giving the anonymous "donor" about one half an hour to get there. It was doable by anyone with enough power to get the money together that Adrian required to perform his special services, but not by local or even federal law enforcement agencies. That was the first line of defense against capture.

The second line of defense came when Adrian pulled up near the dead drop less than five minutes later. He watched the few people in the area carefully, alert for anything that smelled of this being an undercover or sting operation. If it was such an endeavor, the rules were simple: first, Adrian would make sure he could escape, and second, if he was able to he would put a bullet in the brain of every person involved in the trap.

There were no indicators that this was a trap, however, and in twenty minutes a man came up with a medium size paper bag that he deposited in the trash can. Adrian, who had come prepared, dressed lightly and wearing a pair of crutches, asked a passing jogger if he could throw away an empty Coke can for Adrian. The jogger obliged, and as he threw away the empty can, Adrian scanned the area for any movement or any signs that law enforcement was nearby.

Nothing. No walking lovers who appeared more interested in the trash can than in each other. No joggers on the verge of crashing because they were worried about the trash can and not where they were putting their feet. No glints of light in the trees nearby that would signal watchers with binoculars.

A few moments later, Adrian limped over to the trash can, acting like an itinerant wanderer interested in nothing more interesting than possible recyclables. He reached in and swiftly recovered the package that had been dropped there, then moved away without dawdling, but without moving overly fast, either.

Once back at his safe house - a ramshackle place in a poor part of the city - Adrian opened the package. Inside was a sum of money - the exact amount named in the email, in fact - and three photos. One man, one woman, one child. Each photo had a name written below it. The man: Scott Cowley. The woman: Amy Cowley. The child: Chad Cowley.

That was it. There was nothing else, no other indicators of what the money was for or who the people were. That was best. Even if Adrian were arrested at this point, he could claim that he was simply dumpster diving, just as many of the denizens of this part of the city were wont to do from time to time, and had simply found the cash. It was a thin story, and any cop worth his or her salt would know it was false - but knowing was not proving in a court of law, and Adrian knew that he would walk if someone came barging through his door at this point.

But Adrian
did
know what the photos were for, and what the money represented.

He turned the photos over. As was the custom for his jobs, the pictures were labeled, one, two, and three, setting forth the order of the extermination. The child was to be killed first, the woman second, and the man third. There were no other instructions, save on the last photo, which had a written statement to be made to the third target before termination.

Adrian turned on his computer, a surprisingly high-tech and well appointed model for such an otherwise dilapidated apartment, and began researching the family. It used to be much harder to conduct such searches, but with the advent of the internet, he could almost always find out what he needed to know - or at least find out a good place to start - by simply entering a search for the people in question.

After a few minutes, he had found his starting point.

The man was a police officer.

Adrian sat back, looking at the photo, and smiled. Killing police always had a special zest to it for him. They all thought they were so righteous, so perfect, that they seemed to think they were protected from the ills that plagued others. As though guardian angels watched over them.

But put a bullet in their brains - or as in this case, in the brains of Scott Cowley and the brains of his wife and child - and they bled and died just like anyone else.

***

2.
***

Scott Cowley did not particularly like fairy tales.

To him, they always seemed too saccharine, too sappy. Even the older versions, where Cinderella's sisters were willing to cut their own feet to fit into the magic slipper, even the ones where the heroes and heroines were not guaranteed a happy ending, even those were still too hard for him to read, and it was all for one reason: "Once upon a time."

Once upon a time was just so nebulous. What, had Prince Charming never been a baby? Had he never peed in his father's open mouth the way Scott's own son had once done before Scott learned to keep his mouth tightly shut when changing the boy's diapers? Had Rapunzel never learned to read and write before her hair got so long that spending her time on anything other than tending it became a physical - if not moral - impossibility? "Once upon a time" implied that somehow, all those fairy tales and all their characters just sprang to life fully formed, like a Greek god. It just didn't sit right with Scott.

That was why his marriage to Amy was so odd. Because in his mind, it began once upon a time.

Once upon a time, there were two people, named Amy and Scott. And the reason they began once upon a time was because Scott could not remember a time without her. It
was
as though she had sprung fully formed into his life: a child he remembered in his earliest memories. A girl he had spent every day in high school with. A woman who had moved from the small town of Meridian, Idaho, to follow him to college in Los Angeles. A bride he had wedded his first year at the Academy. A mother who bore him their son and then raised him so well that Scott sometimes felt like simply standing beside her and admiring as she did her work.

Once upon a time, there were two people, named Amy and Scott. And once upon a time, he fell in love with her. And now it was decades later, and every day was still once upon a time, because he was living in his
own
fairy tale, and it was a fairy tale that, like his life with Amy, had begun once upon a time - because they were one and the same.

Now, he watched her walking in front of him. She was beautiful, like a fairy, a creature that never quite stopped moving, any more than a breeze stopped moving. To stop moving would be death to a breeze, and surely death to her, to this creature who was so beautiful that she could capture hearts with a smile, yet so strange that she had chosen to love
him
.

He smiled, and smiled still more as he watched her holding hands with their son. Chad was eight, and beautiful as his mother was, as though both of them had fallen from the same neighborhood in Heaven and against all odds had reunited in the earthly form of his family. Though if Amy was a breeze, Chad might be a full-blown gale: just as incessantly moving, but somehow more grand, more loud, more
present
than anyone Scott had ever seen before.

He and Amy talked about it some nights, after making love, when they were in one another's arms and talking about the same thing they always did during their pillow talk: their family - what it was and what it would one day become. And when they spoke about Chad, both of them agreed that he was something special, something powerful and wonderful and good packed into a small body that would one day grow to become a man who would - no doubt - change the world in great and meaningful ways. He might become a brilliant scientist, or a famous artist, or even - God willing - a good husband and father. But no matter how he channeled his energies, he was special, and there was no doubt about that.

Amy turned at that moment, half-swiveled her body as she looked at some fruit in a street-vendor's stand, and Scott quickly dodged behind a nearby trash bin. He had nothing to hide, but he loved to follow them, loved to watch them both from afar as they did nothing more nor less miraculous than living.

Once upon a time, Scott Cowley had a family.

Amy turned back a moment later, and resumed her walk, still holding Chad's hand in her own. Chad's other hand was also holding something: a pretend police badge that Scott had given him for his eighth birthday a few weeks before. It wasn't much, it wasn't a trip to Disneyland or a real pony or a trust fund, because they were still a relatively young family and though Scott had finally made Detective the year before he was also supporting a stay-at-home family in Los Angeles on a cop's salary, which meant that every penny was spoken for, every dollar spent almost before it was earned. But in spite of the relative paucity of the presents, Chad's eighth birthday had been a special one, with enough presents to feel like a birthday and enough love to feel like a true party. Scott gave him the badge almost as an afterthought, and yet it was that toy that Chad had gravitated toward and used almost every single day since then, playing cops and robbers in a lovely world where the bad guys were always caught; where justice always prevailed.

Scott watched them walk for almost a quarter-mile before he finally did what he always did: he reached into his pocket, past the bulge under his armpit where he wore his firearm, and pulled out a cell phone. He increased his speed, coming to within a half-block of his family, then dialed a number. Ahead of him, he could barely hear the electronic chirp as Amy's own cell phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket, and he heard a click on his own phone as she answered.