Bone Chase Page 3
—December 1895 issue of The Strand Magazine
Found several dozen websites that refute this as being real —Jonas
Of course they did. It’s a mass plan to discredit all evidence, duh! —Matt
FOUR
Getting Ethan off campus proved to be harder than they’d expected. Twice they’d attempted to slip out of the building, but both times they spotted surveillance. Ultimately they went to the basement and crossed through the attached environmental sciences building into Cristol Chemistry. Then, careful to avoid internal closed-circuit cameras, they followed a service tunnel into the Memorial Center. The student union was still open. They had a few moments of freedom before the cameras would pick him up, so while Ethan waited beneath a camera, Shanny bought him a pink hoodie, taking care to keep it in the bag so no one watching would associate her with the color.
They eventually found a blind spot, and she gave it to him. He immediately refused to wear it.
“No way in hell.”
“Come on. No dangerous felon is ever going to wear a pink hoodie. Now put the damn thing on.”
“But this will draw attention.”
“Not to your face. Only to the color.”
He looked long and hard at her, but she wasn’t about to give. She’d just turned her life upside down for him. Wearing a pink hoodie didn’t seem that big of a deal in light of her sacrifice.
They left through the student union entrance with a group of undergrads heading toward Euclid Parking Garage. Ethan noted several people positioned outside conducting active surveillance. It wasn’t something he would have noticed before, but with his ever-increasing sense of paranoia, he almost felt expert at detecting them. He forced himself to act naturally when they turned their gaze on Ethan’s party, but the group could have been anyone, and as soon as they were noticed, they were dismissed.
Shanny got to her pink Fiat 500, her face tight with tension. The back of the vehicle was small but just big enough to fit him inside if he pulled his legs in snug. He glanced around the garage for a camera but didn’t see one. Then, with less than enthusiasm, he did as he was told. She stuffed his pack in after him and barely managed to get the back door shut. She had a bag of clean folded laundry, which she then upended on him from inside the car to completely conceal him.
As they suspected, they ran into a roadblock.
An officer questioned her. She showed her faculty and student IDs, then he waved her through. After she was about fifty feet away, she spoke into the mirror.
“Rule number one of escaping. No one will suspect you in a pink hoodie. Rule number two of escaping. No one will expect you to get away covered in random clothes hiding in a Fiat 500.”
“What’s rule number three?” he mumbled through the clothes.
“Not sure,” she responded all too happily. “We haven’t gotten that far yet.”
* * *
After a murderous eternity locked in the cramped position in the back of the clown-size circus car, she finally slowed and found a parking spot. He heard her hurrying around the car. She fumbled with the latch for a moment, then snapped it open. He tumbled out and onto the pavement in an avalanche of clothes, his bag falling last onto his stomach, driving the air from him. She reached down to help him up, then they both began to pick up her formerly clean clothes, now soiled from the dirty asphalt of the parking lot.
When Ethan reached over to grab a pair of pink panties, she smacked his hand away. He stood straight then and spent time shaking his own wrinkles out, shedding the kinks and aches he’d earned in the back of the Fiat. The air smelled heavily of Chinese food, and by the boxes stacked near the back door of the building, he knew this was a restaurant.
His prediction was rewarded when, after she locked the doors and he grabbed his backpack, they rounded the side of the building and entered from the front. Called Happy Buddha, the restaurant had a giant namesake standing in the hostess area, inviting people to rub his stomach for luck.
Shanny rubbed his belly as she passed, then seated herself. Ethan followed, but didn’t rub the belly. When she sat, her whole body sagged.
He sat across the booth, the worn vinyl cracking beneath him. “Tired?”
She rolled her head on her neck, eyes closed. “Exhausted. I hadn’t planned on being a wanted felon when I woke up this morning. I was just looking forward to coffee with an old friend.”
“Is that who I am?” he asked.
“Of course, dummy.”
“And you aren’t the one who is wanted,” he said. “I am.”
She flipped her eyebrows up and down. “Do you think that they don’t know I’m involved by now?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. They might not. After all, we haven’t been seen together… I don’t think.” Seeing her glance around at the restaurant, he added, “And I don’t think this place counts.”
“If what you think about this Council of David or the Six-Fingered Man is true, then there’s no telling what they can’t do. Their ability to track us is unknown. You said seven minutes is all it took. That’s pretty incredible.”
“This whole thing is incredible.”
A squat Chinese woman with weathered skin and silver-black hair approached the table. She wore a red frayed Chinese jacket with a mandarin collar above blue jeans. Chuck Taylors hugged her elfin feet.
Shanny spoke first. “Mrs. Ma, can we have two number two specials, extra-hot, and two Tsingtao beers, please?”
The woman nodded, turned on her heel, and left.
“I take it you eat here often?”
“Every day if I could. I know it’s not healthy, but her noodles are so good.” She appraised him from across the table with calculating eyes. “What happened to you in Nebraska?”
He shrugged. “Met a few girls. Taught a whole year of math before the layoffs hit.” He shrugged again because he didn’t know what else to do.
“Sounds lonely.”
“Yeah. I suppose it probably was.”
“Why’d you leave, anyway?”
He sighed. She’d been disappointed he’d left. They’d been boyfriend and girlfriend in college. More important, she’d been a terrific friend, and, truth be told, he’d missed her more than he’d imagined, only now realizing the depth of what he’d left behind. There had been a time when… He didn’t want to go there now. So instead, he said, “You knew I had to get out and try to be a success on my own.”
She raised her eyebrows. “How’d that work out for you?”
His eyebrows shot up as the zinger hit home.
Shaking her head, she said, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Mrs. Ma teetered back to the table and gave them two ice-cold bottles of beer, no glasses.
Shanny took a quick swig, then followed it up with a deeper one. “Damn. Being chased makes me thirsty.”
He took a swig as well. The cold, gentle beer smothered the acid in his stomach.
“So tell me,” she said, leaning back in her seat, holding the beer in two hands against her chest. “What’s going on?”
He relayed to her about the mysterious box he’d received in the mail the week before. At the time he hadn’t known it was from his father. On the box had been a note that read, DO NOT OPEN THIS BOX. Inside the box had been another note that read, DO NOT OPEN THE BOX UNLESS. On the other side of the note was DO NOT OPEN THIS BOX IF YOU WON’T COMMIT TO THE MISSION. KNOW THAT YOU WILL MOST LIKELY DIE BUT THAT THE WORLD IS COUNTING ON YOU. IF THEY FIND YOU, SEND THIS BOX TO A PERSON WHOM YOU BELIEVE WILL CONTINUE THE MISSION. WE MUST NOT BE STOPPED.
“That’s so ludicrous.” Leaning forward she asked, “So what was in the box?”
“Two things. One was a microSD with information about how no-shit real giants exist, and the other was a warning of seven things not to do.”
“And what are those seven things?”
He shoved his hand in his pocket and brought out the note, placed it on the table, and turned it toward her.
&
nbsp; DO NOT
1. Talk about this box with anyone.
2. Plug this microSD card into a computer that is connected to the internet.
3. Conduct internet searches without managed attribution.
4. Conduct an internet search for the Council of David—EVER!
5. Travel to Sweden.
6. Answer emails from Valkyrie web server or from .se top-level domains.
7. Trust a six-fingered man.
He knew she read it twice because he saw her lips move as she read the words.
When she finally leaned back, her eyes were wide. She took a deep draw of her beer and set it down on the table.
“Holy Moses, Ethan. Managed attribution? Valkyrie web server? Six-fingered man? Is this real?”
He nodded. “Yes, I think so. There’s a lot of information and—and someone is out there trying to stop us.” He thought of Matt and Sarah and his father and the others. And now him. And now Shanny. He shook his head. “I never should have gotten you involved.”
“Never mind that. She leaned forward and grabbed his hands. “Do you really believe it, Ethan? Do you really think that giants exist?”
“I sort of do.”
Just then the food came, a heaping plate of steaming lo mein noodles coated with peanut paste and red pepper flakes. Slivered carrots, zucchini, squash, and onions poked out of the noodles like vegetable dolphins in an ocean of heat. A single hard red pepper crowned the top of the dish.
He grabbed the piece of paper and shoved it back in his pocket as he eyed the food suspiciously. Ethan wasn’t into especially spicy foods, but he was too hungry to care. He took two healthy bites, then coughed as the pepper flakes struck his esophagus with the force of a nuclear bomb. He gagged as he washed it away with beer, then went back to eating, this time more careful to separate the peppers when he encountered them.
“Are you with someone?” he asked.
She gave him a look, then shook her head. “Let’s leave the sex lives of the not so rich and famous out of this. Back to your… our problem. What are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “No, Shanny. Me. It’s just me. Thanks for helping out as much as you did, but I can’t have you involved anymore.”
She looked like she wanted to argue but instead lowered her eyes to her beer. She whispered, “You don’t get it. You never did.”
He was halfway through his meal when his phone rang.
He pulled it out. He didn’t recognize the number. He tapped the button to ignore and put it back into his pocket.
He ate another two bites before the phone rang again.
This time he answered it. “Yes?”
“Mr. McCloud.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes?”
“I didn’t kill your father.”
Ethan dropped his chopsticks. He jerked his head up and straightened his back, causing Shanny to look up. He held his hand out, then placed it flat on the table.
“Who is this?”
“I think you know.”
“The Six-Fingered Man?” he asked breathlessly.
There was a pause. “Not what my mother called me, but it shall do for now.”
“How’d you find me?”
“We know that the restaurant you’re in is Ms. Witherspoon’s favorite place.”
“How’d you know I was with…” He examined the other patrons in the restaurant.
An obese man with wiry gray hair hovered over a plate of noodles.
An elderly woman ate an egg roll using a knife and fork.
Two college girls laughed and pointed at something on a cell phone, probably one of those nauseating kitten memes.
And then Mrs. Ma.
He turned his attention outside.
A man going by on a bicycle.
A taxi parked down the street.
A man walking a poodle.
Another man standing under an awning.
Ethan let his gaze rest on the man under the pawnshop awning across the street. His face was in shadow. He wore a trench coat, as out of place and so perfectly suitable to the man who was chasing him as to be terrifyingly hilarious.
“Is that you?” He couldn’t keep the quaver from his voice as he hoped desperately the Six-Fingered Man wouldn’t raise his hand and wave. But he didn’t move. It appeared that one of his hands was inside his jacket pocket, while the other was near his ear, as if… as if he was holding a phone.
“I’m not who you think I am.”
Ethan stared at the figure across the street, locked in a paralysis of fear and rage. This was the man who’d killed his father. He didn’t care what he’d said.
He managed to unclench his jaw. “What game are you playing?”
“No game. Just telling you that I am not who you think I am.”
“You’re the Six-Fingered Man.”
“I wasn’t aware that polydactylism was an indication of good or evil.”
“Maybe not, but killing people is.”
This made the man pause. Ethan leaned closer to the dirt-flecked window and stared out between the reverse letters of HAPPY BUDDHA, trying desperately to make out the man’s face, but it was frustratingly steeped in the shadows of the striped awning.
“You’re in over your head, Mr. McCloud.”
You aren’t kidding, he wanted to say, but he held back.
Shanny had been poking him the entire time.
Ethan covered the mouthpiece. “It’s him.”
“Him, who?” Then her right hand shot to her mouth. She followed his gaze to the shadowy man. “Is that him?”
“You need to forget about this, Mr. McCloud. Leave me the contents of the box and you can go in peace.”
Shanny poked Ethan in the arm again. “What does he want?”
“He wants me to stop. He also wants the box.”
“Are you going to give it to him?”
The clash of a knife falling on a plate caused both of them to jump.
“Would it matter?” Ethan thought of his father lying dead on the floor of the bathroom.
“Is this worth your life?” asked the Six-Fingered Man.
Ethan didn’t know what to do. He wanted all of this to stop, but at the same time, he felt a responsibility to his father, to his own legacy of needing to know the truth.
“How did you find us?” He didn’t believe what the man had said about the restaurant.
“I already told you.”
“I don’t believe you.” Then he stared at his phone. He held it at arm’s length for a moment. Then asked, “How did you get my number?”
“It’s listed. Really, Mr. McCloud, I’m trying to help.”
Ethan covered the mouthpiece. “It’s the phone. They hacked my GPS. They can track me anywhere.”
Shanny pulled out her own phone and examined it. “Then he can track me, too.”
“The Council of David will track you down, Mr. McCloud. They will track you down and kill you. Of this you can be certain. You have to trust someone.”
“Leave the phones. Out the back, then into your car.”
She stared at her phone with a glum look. “Are you sure the car is safe? Are there men out back waiting on us?”
“We have no choice. We have to put some distance between us and him.”
“And the Council of David.”
“Them too. Everybody.”
She glanced toward the back of the restaurant. “Through the kitchen?”
He nodded.
“Mr. McCloud—”
Ethan shoved the phone into his noodles. Shanny tossed hers onto the middle of the table along with a twenty-dollar bill. Her car keys were already in her hands. He grabbed his pack and they charged past the fat man, just as he was getting up. Shanny managed to slip by, but Ethan slammed into the mountain of a man. Ethan fell back. The fat man fell forward, his great bulk shattering the table and the plates stacked upon it. Ethan scrambled to his feet, leaped over the man, and found himself in the kitchen a dozen feet
behind Shanny.
Voices shouted in Chinese as three men in front of giant woks shook fists and spoons at them. A lanky dishwasher merely stood watching, an unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his crooked mouth. Shanny hit the screen door, and she and Ethan went through.
Wary of possible captors in the back parking lot, they quickly checked in all directions, but there wasn’t anyone except a woman leaning into her car toward the dark shape of a car seat.
They ran to Shannon’s Fiat 500.
Shanny got in and fumbled the keys into the ignition.
Ethan was getting in just as the woman backed out of her car, not carrying a baby but a shotgun.
“She has a gun!” He yelled as he dove into the front seat and pulled his head down.
Shanny pulled hers down as well.
Just as she hit the gas, the woman fired, taking out the back and front windows in a hail of noise, glass, and debris.
The Fiat bucked forward, slamming into a wall.
Shanny reversed it and slammed into a parked car.
The gun went off again, peppering the side of the Fiat.
Shanny put the car in drive and peeked above the dashboard just far enough so she could see, then steered the once pristine vehicle out of the parking lot and onto the street. She turned right, putting the building between them and the woman but taking them nearer the Six-Fingered Man.
As they roared up the street, Ethan looked over at where the man had been standing.
The space was now empty.
SUPPOSITION: Advanced being intervention theory, or ABIT, postulates that there was an intervention early in the human timeline by beings who were physically and technologically advanced far beyond human abilities. The nature of these stories falls into the character of folklore, which is often metaphorical to allow for easier memorization. These metaphors normally rhymed in the origination language, which once translated across many languages, tends to lose its original meanings. —Paul