Ocean in the Sea Read online

  The stairwell beyond was empty and lit with glaringly raw florescent lights. Squinting, Lewis followed her down the steps to the second landing where he saw two large men in security uniforms waiting. A folded orange stretcher leaned against the wall behind them, and one of the men held what looked to be a paramedic’s medical kit. Doctor Trent stopped in front of them and turned to face Lewis, who stopped and raised his eyebrows. The phrase, ‘what the fuck?’ entered his mind. An explanation would be forthcoming, he was sure. This fell outside normal schemas and heuristics. She might as well have taken off her panties and thrown them in his face.

  “This is as far as I go.” She reached into the pocket of her lab coat. When her hand came out, Lewis found himself looking at a pistol. “Um…” He started to raise his hands when a muffled ‘whump’ issued from the muzzle followed by an impact against his chest. Looking down, he saw a silver cylinder jutting from just below his sternum. It hurt like Hell, but it had all happened too fast for panic to set in.

  “OW! What!?” Instinctively grasping the cylinder and pulling it out, he held the long metal needle up to his eyes. Its bloody end dripped with a viscous yellow fluid. Dropping the dart, he stumbled and put his back against the wall. "Please… don't... kill me."

  Nora scoffed. “You’re already dead, you idiot. And you’ll be happier that way, trust me. I read your personality analysis and your history. Your life is shit.”

  Lewis clasped his chest. Feeling his knees bend, he slide downward, unable to hold his weight. His head swam with vertigo and his heart pounded. Already dead? It was poison then. Too late to do anything. “Please,” he whimpered, thinking of the monkeys. “don’t take my brain.”

  Nora clenched her jaw. “Listen carefully, dipshit. You’re not going to remember anything except what I tell you. Code Tag 3924. Avoid capture. Avoid the authorities. Find shelter and go to sleep. Those are your priorities. Nothing else matters. End tag.”

  “End… tag?” he gasped.

  “Yup.”

  Pusher Man

  Forty one hours after the tagging of Lewis Herman, a large tanker truck rumbled in front of Majutay Radionics. Inside the truck, the Martin Danzig’s glasses verified the position where he was to meet the ‘plumber.’ A brief ping and a flashing light pinpointed this position. Taking his foot off the gas pedal, Martin slowed. Greyish-black exhaust blew from the chrome stack, and with the hissing of air brakes, the vehicle ground to halt.

  Thankfully, the Agency hadn’t flagged his inability to assassinate Valon as a lack of competence on his part. His primary goal had been the identification of the target, although it was strange that a positive identification of Valon Kang required an attempt to kill him. It inferred the man was someone resistant to the standard methods of termination. As ridiculous as that seemed, Martin would be the first to admit that the white-haired old man was uncharacteristically lucky at surviving. Several unusual circumstances had prevented him from establishing

  But it no longer mattered. The plumber would take care of the remaining wet-work. The only task left to Martin was this exchange and verification of the target’s demise. His orders were to hand-off the truck and watch the carnage. Return to view the body at the scene or in the morgue. Janitor work, really.

  Opening the door, Martin stepped out. As one of his steel-toed work boots hit the asphalt, he adjusted his optics to a polarized forest green. The car behind him honked impatiently. Without looking, Martin waved it around. The frustrated women gave him an angry scowl. He watched her weave past in his rearward cam.

  In the parking lot across the street, a tall white male in his mid-thirties extracted himself from a yellow Corvette. Jerking at his ostentatious blue silk shirt, he adjusted his straw cowboy hat and straightened the red bandana around his neck. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he sauntered toward Martin and the truck. His rainbow stitched pig-skin boots clicked as he walked. The large iron buckle on his pants caught the sunlight and flashed. It read “Rocky Mountain Oyster Eating Champion. Havre Montana.”

  Martin gave a look of disapproval. The outfit, not discounting the yellow mullet was flamboyant – the entire getup – an amateur disguise or an intentional insult. This was the plumber? He looked like a redneck stereotype.

  “Hey,” said the cowboy. “Know wheres I can get me some of them Cracklin Frost doughnuts?”

  Looking him up and down, Martin hung his head and sighed in obvious disgust. “Wouldn’t you rather have a bagel?” he asked. Trying not to choke on stupidity.

  “Naw… I don’t eat gluten.”

  “Sure, gluten… then I recommend Kaspersky’s Bakery.” The routine completed, Martin lowered his eyelids half-mast. “Nice outfit, by the way. Very discrete.”

  The man looked down at his shirt. “Yeah. I been work’n on the rail road, and you was supposed to bring a fertilizer truck.” The cowboy squinted critically at the semi and took his hat off. Wiping his brow, he covered his head back up and adjusted the stray hat a couple times. “This here’s a tanker truck.”

  “Indeed it is,” agreed Martin. “This is the best I could do. Will it work for you or should we try this again tomorrow after I raid a shit farm?”

  “Nah.” The cowboy kicked the toe of his boot into the ground. “Tomorrah’s too late.” He jumped into the semi cab and came out a few seconds later holding an unlit road flare from the emergency kit. “I’ll make do.” He glanced around the front of the truck at the Majutay building. “Best get your ass gone, boy.” He threw Martin a set of keys. “Take Susan,” he said, looking toward the Corvette. “But watch the clutch. She gets squirrely in second, and don’t make her wait too long before fourth gear. She ain’t inta any kinda foreplay.”

  Martin caught the keys and looked up. “Much obliged, pardner.”

  Grinning, the cowboy pointed his finger like a gun at Martin. As he dropped his thumb down he clicked his tongue and winked. “Susan’s a gift from me to you. Sometimes God does shit like that – giving gifts to the unfortunate and all.” He looked back to the semi. “Better hurry though,” he concluded. “God’s got other gifts to bestow.”

  The idiot must be psychotic, thought Martin. Rotating his jaw, he strode swiftly across the street where he entered the Corvette and gunned the engine. It was an impressive machine. Martin decided he liked it. The cowboy tipped his hat as the yellow sports car zoomed past.

  Once Martin vanished around the corner, the cowboy cracked his knuckles and threw his shoulders back. “Yee-haw,” he said softly. Focusing his mind, the entity within the rustic garb raised his left hand toward the top of the semi and made a fist with his right. Slowly, he pulled his left hand back. As if grabbed by an irresistible force, the vehicle tilted on its tires, angling toward him. At a forty five degree tilt, he opened his right fist and thrust his palm at the tanker truck. Instantly, the vehicle rose and moved, lifting into the air. With great speed, the semi truck flew across the street directly into the front lobby of the eight story brownstone building. The booming impact shook the ground as the twisting vehicle penetrated the outer glass façade and rolled further into the interior. Someone screamed. Alarms went off.

  Behind Heticus, a parking lot attendant jumped out of a tiny booth and shouted in amazement. “MY GOD!” The elderly man stepped forward, shocked at what he’d just observed. Heticus turned to him with a smug twist of his lips.

  “Not your God.” He raised his hand toward the parking lot and pulled a green pickup out of the selection of projectiles. As it flew toward him the truck gained in height. Ducking beneath as it flew overhead; Heticus flung out his hand and gave the old Chevy a boost. Still accelerating, the pickup sailed serenely into the lobby, crashing directly into the sideways tanker. The vehicle’s skin ruptured and again, the ground shook. Bricks crumbled off the front of the building. Terrified voices shouted from inside. A bloodied woman ran through one of the shattered glass windows, screaming. The cowboy let her go.

  There was only one ant in this nest he wanted, and she weren’
t it. With flamable fluid spraying the interior, he was ready for step two. Soak, and then ignite, he reminded himself. Didn’t work the other way. You had to do things in the right sequence.

  From the doorframe of the 6X6 shack behind Heticus where the overweight retired parking lot attendant stood, the man screamed out, “What THE F…!!” His hand dropped to his cell phone.

  Without looking, Heticus flipped his hand at the uniformed rent-a-cop and flung him backwards through his little wooden booth. The impact was strong enough to shatter the two-by-fours and fiberboard, killing him instantly.

  Pulling the road flare from his belt Heticus sniffed the air. “Smells like Grandma’s cornbread, but I’m in the mood for carne asada.” Igniting the flare, he casually held it up at arm’s length, aiming it toward the lobby and the leaking gasoline truck inside. Opening his hand, the flare streaked out like a tracer bullet where it entered the lobby. Gas fumes ignited from the cracked tanker, and a jet of blazing petroleum sprayed fire upward into the ceiling. A ball of orange-red flames rumbled through the entry and out the front. The trapped fumes flowered, bursting through the windows. Red amorphous claws curled up the front of the structure, blackening the unbroken glass and snapping brick. Heticus curled his lips back in satisfaction.

  He was a gardener of fire.

  More alarms went off, along with the fire suppression system jetting foam through the building. A side door suddenly slammed open and a squad of five men in body armor rushed into a dirty alley on the right. Alert and tactical, they scanned the area for a target, but before they could reach the front Heticus dropped a silver minivan on them. There was nothing like adding insult to injury. Emblazoned with a ‘Soccer Mom’ bumper sticker, the crumpled van rolled through the blood-smeared alley in a crushed mass of twisted metal and broken bone.

  Warmed-up, Heticus threw cars into the third and fifth floor windows. A gunshot went off from somewhere to the left of the burning structure. Pulling a hand toward himself, he jerked a silver Volvo out of the third story and reversed its motion, flinging it down in the direction of the sniper. As it crashed and rolled, a bullet buzzed off the asphalt to his right. He raised his fist toward the roof and jerked the sniper from his position. As the paramilitary-goon zoomed down, Heticus opened his fist into a palm and inverted the kinetic thrust, sending the contractor killer flying back into the building at several hundred miles an hour. The pulped remains splattered inwards, penetrating deep into the call center cubicles.

  The cowboy smirked. “Now you a good Injun.”

  An obese burning woman ran screaming from the shattered lobby entrance. The cowboy jerked a hand out and yanked her toward him. Halfway across the street he reversed her direction and hurled her upward into a fifth story window. After this, he put both of his palms out and sent a kinetic pulse-wave that shattered all the remaining windows. The entire structure shuddered on its foundations.

  At the sound of a distant siren, the cowboy turned. Traffic had halted down the street and people were attempting to back up or turn around. The road was blocked. Thinking he should ‘clear the way’ for the police cars and fire trucks, Heticus gestured with the back of his left hand and flung a dozen cars end over end. They crashed and tumbled, rolling down the street like toys flung by a giant. Several hit other cars. One broke off a fire hydrant, spraying water skyward. Another crashed through the wall of the brick building next door, blasting through the law offices of Nemowitz and Holfern. The sirens continued sounding, but ceased to grow closer, and the cowboy turned his attention back toward the Majutay building.

  “TANANDOR!” he bellowed. “You got ONE DIRECTION FUCKER.”

  The false messiah would hide, buried in his little bug-hole. That’s what he was good at, thought Heticus, but there was no escape. The others were waiting. Like removing a wart, Heticus planned on burning his way down into the very roots of this structure. Death was inevitable. Death was no escape.

  One after another, Heticus hammered the building in a barrage of cars, trucks, telephone poles, street lights, a honey bucket, and several cargo containers. He put a forklift through a fifth floor window. He ripped the corners off the roof and flung them into the side doors. When he finally got bored, he held one palm and one fist out, alternating with rapid pulsations of retraction and repulsion that caused the air itself to pulse the vibrations of a jackhammer, crumbling the building and breaking the bricks into powder.

  Pausing, he checked his watch and looked to the west, reaching into his pocket.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  A mile away at the top of the hill on the other side of the West Seattle Bridge, Martin Danzig slowed to a stop on the side of the road and got out of the yellow corvette named Susan. There he clipped a sunglass insert over the top of his digital glasses. Once in place, the lenses hidden beneath connected to the embedded chips via tight-beam encrypted Bluetooth. This was the GPS point for his observation. Pinching his finger to adjust the focus, Martin zoomed in on the smoke rising from the valley below.

  The broken exposed interior of the burning Majutay Radionics building blazed at the base where the flames continued to consume the gasoline from the tanker truck. He expected the cowboy to have driven it into the interior, but to Martin’s disappointment the nauseating redneck stood across the street. Too bad. He’d been hoping the ‘plumber’ was suicidal. It wouldn’t be the first time the Agency used a fanatic. But Valon Kang could potentially survive an arsonist, and the Agency demanded assurance.

  Noticing the lunatic waving his hands in controlled motions, Martin wrinkled his brow and zoomed closer. The cowboy’s gestures appeared to correspond to objects being flung through the air at the building. Massive objects. Cars. Marin folded his arms and triggered record. His skeptical mind went into overdrive.

  Watching the cowboy seemingly tossing cars, crates, people, and a forklift, Martin quickly formulated two possibilities. Either this was a trick, or the man possessed what could only be described as a paranormal ability. Everything Martin knew and believed in argued for the first possibility against the second, and as he strained his brain to come up with potential reasons as to why someone might perpetrate such a hoax while in the middle of engaging in what had to be the messiest assassination attempt in history. The only thing that came to mind was a healthy injection of fear and paranoia among the general public, aka sheep. Of course, this also applied to the second possibility – that the cowboy actually did have massive telekinesis and was willing to use it. Times like this, Martin wished he’d never sworn off alcohol.

  There could be technology involved, perhaps some kind of hyper-magnetic levitation system located in the surrounding buildings that the cowboy controlled via gesture recognition. Or, perhaps, none of this was real and he was suffering some type of visual hallucination. Maybe that was it. Maybe it was that bacon flavored ice cream he’d had for breakfast. Thank you Seattle. Or maybe someone had hacked his optics.

  Martin took his glasses off and peered at the distant devastation with his unaided eyes. It was still there. He put the glasses back on and restored the zoom.

  The Agency would definitely want to see this. Unless they already knew about it and wanted it kept secret, in which case they might snuff him out to ensure secrecy. No body, no crime. Snorting softly, Martin reversed his decision to inform them.

  “Stop recording,” he stated aloud to his glasses. Evoking the gesture recognition interface, he peered at the file system hovering before him. Opening the logs, he scrolled through the list of connections until he found the cloud-based link and identified the locations where the recordings had been stored. Initiating a looping delete routine, he wiped and overwrote the memory locations as best he could. No guarantees that a secondary server might have backed them up already, but backups were usually performed on a set schedule. There was a good chance he’d cleaned everything.

  Taking the glasses off, he removed the tiny micro-SIM chip and put it in his mouth, crunching it in his teeth to a fine p
articulate before swallowing. That ought to take care of the issue.

  Returning to his observations, Martin zoomed in again. The cowboy paused and reached into his pocket, pulling out a small remote device with a red button on the front. Turning to the west, the cowboy held it up, seemingly looking across the great distance toward the hill where Martin stood. Smiling, the cowboy pointed his finger at the button and waggled his eyebrows. The finger descended and hit the button just as Martin lunged forward, but it was far too late.

  Fourteen pounds of binary explosives in Susan’s trunk detonated. The resulting conflagration excavated a flaming crater on the top of the hill. Bits and pieces of Susan could be found dozens of kilometers from the center. Fragments of Martin’s corpse, on the other hand, were far more difficult to obtain.

  Paradigm Shift

  Lewis blinked, felt his palms against the rough texture of cold wet asphalt and the rain against his face. His head pounded and his stomach ached with hunger. A smooth wall pressed against his back. In the darkness, the world spun in a light-leeched mist of greys and violets. Several hundred feet away, a single streetlight illuminated the end of an alley. Above him, rain dripped from spiral rings of razor wire atop the wall, and from somewhere in the shadows beyond that, a spotlight moved.

  Leaning over, he gagged, dry-heaving for a minute. There was nothing in his stomach, and his body felt cold. He needed help. Reaching into his pocket for his phone, his hand came out with a stale piece of bread and a paper flyer. It was too dim to read the writing, and he didn’t think he’d be able to keep the bread down even though he was famished. Better not tempt fate.

  “Avoid capture. Avoid the authorities. Find shelter and go to sleep. Those are your priorities. Nothing else matters.”

  Good God, he was hearing voices! Worse, it was Nora Trent. Why was she so rude? Stopping, he waited to hear it again. Silence.