The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

in the eye would be trumped by the need to find refuge in a bottle and the comfort of random women.

He pushed the ghosts aside and hurried Jamie inside the shack.

“Look, we don’t have time to spare,” he warned the teens. “That chopper going down won’t do a damned thing except bring more attention we don’t need.” He told Michael and Sammie to stand lookout. “You hear anybody coming this way, see anything move, give me a head’s-up. Clear?” Ben looked only at Michael as he completed this command.

Ben pointed to Michael’s pistol. “Take care with that.”

“Dude. Chill. I’m the black guy, remember? I’m supposed to be good with a piece, now ain’t I? Besides, I got GI Jane here for pointers.”

Ben and Jamie entered the one-room shack. Dust gathered like a blanket on a wood stove, a fetid cot, and rickety homemade chairs. Ben limped to the cot and fell upon it without reservation, pleased to be off his bad knee. A dust cloud blew up around him. A fitting end, Ben thought. How could I have come to this?

He stared his little brother square in the eyes and prepared to carry out the only good deed he had left in his heart.

 

38

T WO CARS SQUEALED as they turned off Highway 39 onto an unmarked, unpaved side road. After a quarter-mile, they stopped. Inside the red Camaro, two sets of eyes focused on Agatha, for whom the past several minutes produced nothing but setbacks. She kept her speaker phone on as Jonathan Cobb made visual contact with his targets at Ginny’s Creek and opened fire upon them. She felt an unprecedented rush of adrenalin.

Then the cell phone crackled and the connection died. Agatha knew the truth before it was confirmed by the police scanner. A police chopper reached the scene, its pilot describing the burning wreckage and a single body on the shore.

Agatha told Christian to get them off this highway to someplace less visible. They passed two patrol cars, each flashing blue lights.

 “We’re not backing down,” Christian jumped in. “We just need a break to fall our way.”

Agatha nodded. “How far are we from the crash?”

Arthur studied his laptop. “Under two miles, due west.”

Agatha leaned forward and pointed to the screen. “And the land between here and there is largely unpopulated?” Arthur nodded. “Few roads? Heavy forest?”

“The highway cuts through the middle. Otherwise, yes.”

“Good. If they intend to protect James until rebirth, they will use the forest as a shield. We have to go in after them.”

Arthur grimaced. “Agatha, we have no idea where to begin.” He pointed to the screen. “This is unfamiliar terrain. With Jennifer in Austin Springs, there are only five of us. If we get separated, we are more likely to encounter police than Chancellors.”

“Retreat is unacceptable.” She glanced at her phone, which delivered a live image from a remote camera installed by the observers twenty miles north of Albion. “What if Walter was not bluffing? What if he did arrange to bring Shock Units here?”

“You said yourself, nothing has come through the fold since the Caryllan transmission,” Arthur countered. “If Walt did leave behind secret orders for Shock Units, what else didn’t he tell us? Walt Huggins is a brilliant man, but I think we give him too much credit.”

“Or not enough.” Agatha thought through her options. “Lester Bowman and Reginald Fortis were Dacha Masters during their time in the Guard. Put them in a setting where they can track their prey as they did decades ago, and their brilliance will emerge.”

“I want to go with them,” Christian insisted. “They can track Sheridan, then I’ll kill him.”

“No,” Agatha said. “I admire your bravado, but Arthur is correct. We should avoid stretching our resources too thin. Lester and Reginald can hunt down their location, then – and only then – will we respond to provide fire support. Understood?”

Christian crossed his arms like a petulant child, a move that pleased Agatha. She would have lost faith in him had he accepted her decision without protest.

“Calculate the most effective search pattern, Arthur. We need to hope this is one contingency for which Walter did not plan.”

 

39

J AMIE SAT ON the fetid cot beside his brother, the pistol firm in his right hand, finger next to the trigger. He felt empty and alone.

“Tell me there’s a way out,” he said. “If you ever loved me, please tell me there’s a way out.”

Ben held the flash drive in his right palm.

“You’ll find this hard to believe, J,” Ben stammered. “I’ve been searching for the answer to that question for years. The proof is right here.”

Jamie studied the memory casing as if it were a surreal joke.

“Fat lot of good that’s gonna do out here.”

“You’re right, but we don’t need a computer to finish this. It’s all up here.” He tapped his skull. “I was searching for truth, and I found it. Everything in a new light. The universe the way the Chancellors never believed. And maybe, Jamie, just maybe …”

Jamie turned to Ben. “Am I going to die?”

“It’s not that simple.”

Jamie cocked his pistol. “You’re pushing me, Ben. I can blow your freaking brains out right now. Give me a reason not to.”

“Faith,” he said. “Faith that despite how crappy a brother I’ve been, maybe I love you more than I can stand. And Jamie, maybe have faith that I wouldn’t bring you in here unless there was at least a little hope.”

Jamie aimed the pistol between his brother’s eyes.

“I don’t want any more doubletalk,” he said. “Straight and simple. You tell me why we’re here and whether I can beat this thing.”

Ben nodded. “If you lower the gun and let me explain.”

Jamie saw the growing bloodstain from Ben’s bullet wound and the