Ukiah - Alien Taste Part 25

"Early yesterday morning."

Ukiah produced his copy of the Cherokee's owner card. "It's a company car, but I own half the company. This is my card." He gave the man his business card. "If you see my partner, I want you to call me. I'm very concerned about him."

The attendant eyed him. "He didn't skip with all the company money, did he?"

Ukiah laughed dryly, shaking his head. "I wish. We're private investigators and we got involved in a very dangerous case. Did my partner tell you where he was going, give any indications of when he was coming back?"

A 747 thundered overhead, so low it looked like it would land in the parking lot. With back thrusters whining, it slipped over the slight hill to presumably land safely.

The man studied the business card, waiting for the rolling jet thunder to abate before speaking. "He said he wanted to get breakfast down the street at the Bob Evans and that he'd be back for the shuttle out to the terminal. He walked off and didn't come back."

Ukiah glanced up the road to the large red restaurant. It was a short walk. There were a number of hotels scattered about it. Maybe Max had checked into one of them and used the airport parking lot as a cover. Over a day, though? No. Not the Max he knew. Something had gone wrong.

"Did you notice anyone following him? Were there any police cars or ambulances that showed up yesterday that you noticed?"

The man considered him. "You really are worried about the dude? No, I didn't see anything."

Ukiah pulled a couple of tens out of his wallet. "I'm not going to be able to take the car right now, so this should cover it for a little longer." He waited until the man acknowledged the first payment. "If you remember anything new or see my partner," he handed him the rest of the money, "there'll be more of this.

He's in a lot of danger and I need to find him fast."

"No, no, I don't need the money." The man waved off the bills. "I'll let you know. No sweat. Your partner tipped me big to keep an eye on the car for him. More than enough to keep an eye out for him too."Ukiah pocketed the money. "I'm going to check out the car and then go down to Bob Evans. I'll rearm the security when I'm done."

"Cool." The attendant noted an arriving customer and started off. "Take care."

Both the right and left shoulder holsters were gone. Max's favorite two pistols and the shotgun were missing from the gun safe. All the preloaded 9mm and .357 Magnum magazines, plus a box of shotgun sh.e.l.ls, were gone from the ammo box. Max's trench coat, which could cover all three guns nicely, was missing too.

Another jet pa.s.sed overhead, looking impossibly large to be in midair. He could feel the rumble of the engines in his bones. He glanced at the hotels. How could anyone sleep through such noise?

He shook his head and considered the missing guns. Max wouldn't take a shotgun to go eat breakfast, not while carrying two pistols already. Max had lied to the attendant. Ukiah scanned the area.

Where could Max go in a short distance so heavily armed? Why hadn't he parked closer to the site?

There was only one logical answer. The old abandoned terminal. It was surrounded by acres of cracked and weedy parking lot. A lone car would have stood out, begged to be noticed. A quick jaunt over the four-lane highway and he'd be in.

Ukiah shook his head. "Oh, Max. You went in and didn't come out." He flipped out his phone and called Indigo. Her voicemail answered on the first ring and informed him that Special Agent Zheng was not taking calls. He swore, noticing that the attendant was heading back toward him. Indigo must have been hit by the new wave of reporters chasing after the story of his resurrection. The communication barrier was back up.

The attendant came up to him and indicated a large panel truck with his eyes. "A dude on a Harley's been sitting behind that truck watching you for the last five minutes. I didn't realize it at first, but he's definitely watching you."

Ukiah threw out his senses and caught the tingling of Pack presence. "I see him. He's a friend.

Don't worry."

It was Bear, looking bored.

"I don't know how you do that," Ukiah said. "I've been keeping watch on someone following me."

"You watch with your eyes." Bear tapped his temple and then his chest. "You have to feel with your soul. I can let you roam far ahead of me and with my soul follow."

Ukiah nodded, realizing that the Ontongard could track him as easily. He jerked his head toward the old terminal. "Max went in yesterday. His truck's still here. I can't get through to my lady of steel. Where's the Pack?"

"Scattered far and wide. You think this is the Ontongard's lair?"

He glanced back over the terminal. "Could be. Someone has Max in there."

"You waiting for the Pack this time?" Bear asked, starting up his big bike. It rumbled to life, competing in noise and vibration with a DC-9 coming in for a landing.

Ukiah considered this. After last time, would he rush forward again? He had been barely in time to save Indigo. Rushing ahead had hurt like h.e.l.l, but waiting would have cost him her life. Still, if he hadn't died, then Max wouldn't have gone off alone to be captured and maybe killed.

He sighed. "No, I've got to go in now. I need to find him."

Ukiah saw a host of entrance options as he walked across the parking lot. Rental cars this way.

Arriving pa.s.sengers that way. Departing pa.s.sengers over here. Each sign pointed to a different level or wing of the old terminal.The first door he came to was just beyond an empty circular fountain. It was an odd outcrop of a building, separated from the terminal by a five-lane crescent of departing pa.s.senger traffic. A half-circle in design, it fit neatly, although weirdly, into the crescent. The door had been gla.s.s, but a sheet of plywood was fixed over it.

He ran his fingers over the door handle. Max had touched it, but had he entered through this door?

Ukiah tried the door and found it unlocked. A stairwell took up the breadth of the tower, leading down into some s.p.a.ce under the roadway. It was cave-black beyond the slant of sunlight from the open door.

Would Max have gone down these steps? The door was unlocked, providing easy access. Max would have been looking for things hidden, which the darkness suggested in plenty. Ukiah closed his eyes and focused on the scents coming up from below: damp mold, dust shifting down from a failing roof, Ontongard's musk, and faintly, finally, the smell of human urine.

Ukiah considered for the first time that the Ontongard had his three memories. Obviously they had used one to make guises of himself. That left two mice that could be used to make Gets. Ukiah sniffed the scent of urine uneasily. Had the Ontongard kidnapped victims to be made into Gets?

He checked the inside door handle. It worked easily. He would be able to get back out. He stepped into the dark stairwell and let the door swing shut behind him. After a moment his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he could see that there was a faint light coming from below. He crept down the steps.

Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, and the echoes told him that the room was vast. Far to the right of the staircase, a single lightbulb gleamed. Across from the door, hertz was spelled out in giant letters and beside it was a ticket counter still littered with information packs.

Ukiah stalked toward the light. Signs pointed out GROUND TRANSPORTATION, BAGGAGE CLAIMS, and REST rooms. The single lightbulb, he noticed, was off a strand of recently run Romex cable, stapled haphazardly to the ceiling tile. The white cable ran off into the darkness, but pointed in a straight line at the next distant light.

At the third light, he found where they had jumped Max. They had hurt him, pouring his blood out onto the moldy carpet. Judging from the number of kicked-over chairs, torn, rotting carpeting, and smears of blood, it had been a long wrestling fight. Max's trench coat lay in a rumpled heap on the floor, surrounded by a halo of Max's belongings. His wallet, the cash gone but the credit cards intact. Ukiah slipped it into his own pocket. Car keys. Those too he picked up. Random electronic gadgets that Max forever had stuffed into his pockets-those Ukiah left behind. One, however, was a small mag flash light, which Ukiah used to spot the other belongings. Max's black suede PDA case blended into the background so well that Ukiah almost missed it. So did the case of Max's stash gun. Ukiah s.n.a.t.c.hed them up, hoping that, while he worried over Max's belongings, Max himself wasn't being killed elsewhere. The blood, though, was from yesterday, old and dried.

He did a quick last sweep, bending down to run the light under the still-standing row of chairs.

There he found the remote key. He picked it up, shaking his head. Max had to have thrown it under the chairs while they had wrestled him to the ground. The near cave darkness had cloaked the key from the Ontongard. Ukiah slipped it into his pocket, feeling like he had wasted too much time already.

He found Max's blood trail and took off at a trot.

They had put Max in a ten-by-ten foot office converted into a cell. The Romex line had been diverted to put a light into the room. The lock had been installed recently, the sawdust on the floor still smelling of cut wood. Max had bled on the floor, urinated in the corner, slept on one bare table. The room was now empty. The door leaned at a drunken angle, its hinges popped off but its dead bolt still locked. The dust layering the information desk beside the door had been disturbed; guns and the cured leather of holsters had been placed on the top and removed.

Where was Max?

Ukiah clung to the knowledge that the door had been forced from the inside. Max had probablyescaped and, hopefully, had even recovered his weapons that had been stacked by the door. Ukiah searched the floor for a blood trail out, but Max had stopped bleeding. Taking out the flashlight, Ukiah swept the area. Across the wide hall, he noticed a sparkle of gla.s.s. He crossed the hall, keeping the light trained on the item until he saw it clearly.

He moaned in pain.

A hypodermic syringe gleamed on the dark carpeting. He didn't want to touch it, learn its truths. He forced himself to pick it up. Max's blood tipped the needle. He pulled out the plunger and ran the tip of his pinkie on the inside edge. The ghost impression of Ukiah's blood coated the inside of the syringe. The Ontongard had found a human to make into Ukiah's Get.

Ukiah clutched the syringe tightly until it shattered in his hand, driving tiny slivers of gla.s.s into his palm.

It was useless to deny it. The Ontongard had injected Max a full day ago. His Max was dead, gone, wiped clean and replaced with a copy of himself. Even if Max's body was walking, his soul was gone.

CHAPTER TEN.

Wednesday, June 24, 2004.

Moon Township, Pennsylvania.

Ukiah sat, grief-stricken, bordering on forever. Max was dead. Ukiah couldn't function, couldn't think, could barely even breathe. He thought he knew grief, but this was too huge and awful for him to even see the edges of it. Eventually he realized that he had held a palmful of blood that had slowly changed into a mouse. Whiskers fine as spider legs tickled his fingers, searching for food. He numbly plucked out the shards of gla.s.s and reabsorbed the mouse.

What should he do? He had lost the race this time, lost it so badly he couldn't find the finish line.

What should he do?

He got to his feet. He would have to find his missing Get. Follow with your soul, Bear had told him. Ukiah closed his eyes and felt for the distant echo of himself. Forward and up, the shadow of his soul was impossible to miss.

Max made one mean Get.

Ukiah found the site of the first gunfight in Baggage Claim Area C. Max hadn't been hit; none of his blood stained the floor. He had unloaded his SIG-Sauer P210 into three Gets from the cover of a half wall that separated Area C from Area B. The spent 9mm rounds glittered on the dark floor. The short wall was peppered with shotgun pellets from the Gets' weapons. The Gets lay drained of blood and covered with anxious mice. The nine rounds from the Sauer were split evenly between the Gets. Max had reloaded, dropping the empty, expensive magazine on the ground in a clear indication of his mindset-he wasn't worrying about coming back out of the terminal.

The single 9mm sh.e.l.ls resting on the chests of the dead Gets indicated that Max used the new clip to fire a coup de grace square between their eyes while standing over them.

Ukiah judged that Max had killed the Gets within the hour. Only temporarily dead, it still would be a day or so before the Gets recovered from the damage Max had inflicted.The gunfire must have summoned the second wave of Ontongard Gets. Max laid waste to them in Baggage Claim Area A. The Sauer one-third empty, Max had changed over to the Desert Eagle. Almost two dozen rounds of the spent .357 Magnum casings littered the floor, with two spent magazines dropped wastefully to the side. These Gets had also been finished off with a bullet between the eyes.

The last of the Gets had been solo, armed only with a knife. Why had it come alone after the others had been slaughtered? Max had emptied his shotgun into it, square into the chest. Ukiah winced at the pulverized flesh, his chest aching in sympathy. Why had Max killed this one so cruelly? It was unlike Max.

It was even unlike Ukiah.

Ukiah played the flashlight over the dead body. Its memories skittered before the sweeping beam of light. It wore Nike shoes, blue jeans with torn-out knees, and a blue T-shirt, now torn to ribbons. Ribs gleamed white where flesh had been torn away. Ukiah shifted the light higher to see if Max had felt compelled to add the forehead shot. The light fell on the face, and all became clear.

It was one of Hex's Gets wearing a Ukiah guise.

The likeness was perfect. It was the face he had seen in the mirror thousands of times, except this one was pallid and lax in death. He could see no flaws; nothing to say this wasn't him.

Looking very closely, Ukiah could see that the hair was a shade too light in color. It wasn't his glossy black, but a dark brown. It wasn't something a normal person would notice in the dim light, pressed by enemies. Wearing his guise, Hex's Get had come alone to gain Max's trust and then knife him in the back.

What stupidity. Max would have known instantly that this was a fake. At least Ukiah thought he would. Ukiah hunched beside the disguised body and wondered. Max, even with new Pack senses, might have been fooled for several minutes. Time enough to be killed.

How close had the battle been? It depended on if Max had the Pack memories. Ukiah remembered how lost he had been just days ago, ignorant of the players and even of the game. Without the Pack memories, Max might not have realized there were any disguised Gets in the wings or how to tell them from the real thing.

Ukiah thought back to when he had woken up in the hotel. What had been his last genetically encoded memory? Max feeding him in his mother's kitchen. Grief sudden and hard bent him over, and he smothered a howl of despair that ripped out of his Pack-tainted soul.

No, don't think about it. Push it away. Think of what's at hand. It was the only way he could function. He strove to focus on how the memory of that breakfast related to him receiving the Pack memory. It came after. That had been the morning after he had been so sick. So Max had Pack memory.

Ukiah hunched in the dark, covering his tear-burning eyes. Maybe he should just pull out and leave this to the Pack. They would blow it all to bits with joyful abandon.

No, Max was his Get. He had a responsibility, like a father to a son.

The lights had been set so that the frozen escalator was entirely in darkness. He crept up the uneven steps, making sure the next step was actually there before moving up. He had images of the Ontongard removing a middle section and him falling to a temporary death. Halfway up he tripped over another Get disguised as Ukiah. This one had a canister of the gas Rennie had used on him when the Pack kidnapped him. The Get had all nine rounds of the Desert Eagle emptied into it. It also was still slightly warm. He was getting closer.

Ukiah took the gas and hurried up the rest of the steps. The escalator took him up to ground level, opening onto the wide main hallway of the terminal. Signs indicated that straight ahead were the gates with their waiting areas, behind him was check-in, the ticket counters, and the main terminal entrance. Toward the gates, he could feel a single Pack life, scared and hurt. He started to trot. Sunlight filtered through the filthy windows lining the waiting areas. The light reached across the chair-strewn waiting areas to justtouch the edge of the forty-foot-wide hallway. He kept to the edge, jogging in and out of the slants of light, each patch of darkness blacker still because of the sudden flashes of light.

There was the deep boom of a shotgun up ahead and Ukiah started to run. After a hundred feet he hit the reek of gunsmoke and fresh blood. It was the only warning he got before colliding suddenly with Max, standing in the darkness.

Ukiah rebounded off his partner into the sunlight, stunned that he almost missed Max in the dark.

He reached out his senses, searching for Pack presence in Max. There was none. Max seemed to be totally and only Max. Ukiah almost wept in relief and happiness. "Max! You're okay!"

Max backpedaled into the next slant of light, dismay open on his face, jerking up the shotgun to level at Ukiah's chest. Dismay fled before anger. "d.a.m.n you murdering b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

Ukiah's hands went up in a show that they were innocent of weapons. If Max isn't Pack, he can't tell I'm the real Ukiah. This isn't good.

Sprawled behind Max was a dead fake Ukiah. A shotgun fired at point-blank range had punched a hole in its chest. Ukiah winced, trying not to look at it. Definitely, not good.

"It doesn't work!" Max growled through teeth clenched tight in rage. "I know you're not him. Try anything, and G.o.d forgive me, I'll shoot you like the others."

Max was splattered with blood, and it was clear he had been dragged through h.e.l.l. Three days of stubble darkened his face. His nose had been broken, and both his eyes were bruised deep purple out to the edge of their sockets, masking him into a large rabid racc.o.o.n. His short hair stood up and out in various patches. He had not changed his clothes since Ukiah saw him four days ago. The military starch was long gone. What was left of his clothing was torn, b.l.o.o.d.y, mold-stained, and drenched with fear-tainted sweat.

The shotgun had drifted upward and pointed at Ukiah's face. He cringed at the double-barrel stare.

"Say something," Max shouted. "Don't just stand there looking at me!"

Ukiah shrugged, not sure why Max wanted him to talk. It would be safer for Max just to shoot him, though it probably would be a hard thing for Max to do-even after the third time. "I don't know what to say, Max. Coming back from the dead is hard enough to explain in a hundred words or less. Add a couple of bloodthirsty copies of myself into the mess and-" He motioned faint helplessness with his hands. "What can I say?"

"Say anything. I might believe you."

And unbelievably, it sounded like he might. Was Max just sick of killing Ukiahs, and desperate for any reason not to do it again? Or had Ukiah triggered a gut feeling that the disguised Gets never reached?

He stood dumbfounded, separated from Max by darkness. Finally, he found his voice.

"Max, if I could talk all day, you'd have no doubt. There are a billion words and phrases between us, but I don't know which single one you'd believe right now. You're just going to have to trust me, or shoot me-and all the others like me."

Max stared at him, then motioned downward with the shotgun. "Get on your knees, hands behind your head, cross your legs." As Ukiah complied, Max stepped behind him, bringing up the shotgun. Ukiah squeezed close his eyes, bracing for the shot. It would hurt, he told himself, only for an instant-and then he would heal.

Max took a long, shuddering breath, and ran a hand across Ukiah's back. It puzzled Ukiah until he realized that Max had just swept his hand over the lettering of his tracking T-shirt Private Investigator, Bennett Detective Agency. "Why are you wearing this?"