Six Bits (20 page)

Allie panicked, any of the things she could think to do might make him pull the trigger and she thought she would only be able to make a little port. She focused on the inside of her Mace pepper spray cartridge, then reached out for Raspy’s nasal passages. Could she grab the gun and make a port at the same time? Suddenly, off to Raspy’s left she saw her mother tip her chair over. The sudden motion and loud bang as the chair hit the floor caused Raspy to move the gun briefly towards Mrs. Dans. As it did, Allie opened the biggest port she could from the Mace canister to the back of Raspy’s nasal passage. She immediately knew it was a small port, but apparently it was plenty big enough to let a significant dose of capsaicin through.

Raspy threw his head back in agony. Allie saw him convulsively squeeze the trigger. The gun was pointing at Stephen again! There was a little pop, like a cap gun, but no roar.

Damn! She’d forgotten that she’d let water into that cartridge. Raspy fell to his knees and dropped the gun, clutching his face which had turned bright red. He was coughing and gasping for breath and tears were pouring down his cheeks. Allie picked up the gun and jacked the slide to get the wet bullet out of the chamber. Then she handed the gun to her dad and went to get the knife out of the holster on Roger’s belt.

Allie had just started cutting her mother’s gag loose when one of the bedroom doors slammed open and a man stepped into the room carrying a sawed off shotgun. “Dans, put that phone down!” he yelled.

Allie saw her dad had a phone in his hand. Apparently he’d picked it up off the end table behind him. He dropped it on the floor. “Hello Forst,” he said resignedly.

“So Dans, I’m thinking your daughter has the port machine somewhere in those baggy ass pants.” When Allie started to move to her mother again Forst shouted, “Keep your hands up kid!”

Allie found herself looking down the apparently huge barrel of the shotgun and she slowly raised her hands in the air.

“What are you doing with a knife?”

“Cutting my mom loose.”

“Ah. Well. Put the knife on the table and step over here into the middle of the room. Humpf, to think your dad had a working model all this time and yet he had me chasing my tail trying to make another!”
              Allie slowly set the knife on the table. She tried to reach out with her sense for the shell in the chamber of the shotgun, but it seemed like she’d exhausted her talent for the moment. She stepped over to where he indicated.

“Now, I want you to take off those pants without reaching in the pockets. I don’t know how you control the ‘porter’, but I don’t want your hands even getting near it. If I even
think
you’re trying to do so, I will fire this shotgun, got that? I’ll shoot you above the waist though.” He chuckled. “Wouldn’t want to damage the porter!”

Allie nodded and slowly reached for her belt, loosening it and the snap to her pants, then letting the loose pants fall.

Forst stared at her for a moment. “Nice legs! Now kick the pants over here. I don’t suppose you’d tell me what you did to these idiots I’ve got working for me?” He pointed with his chin to Raspy, still wiping at his eyes and struggling to breathe on the floor.

Allie again tried to sense the shell in the shotgun, to no avail. She stepped out of the pants and kicked them over part of the way to Forst.

Still looking at her legs, he stepped forward, reaching down for the pants. As he did so, the barrel of the shotgun dipped toward the floor! Could she grab it? She was starting to step forward when, BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Forst was thrown against the wall. Allie looked over to see her dad lowering Raspy’s smoking gun. In the sudden ringing silence, “Holy crap, Dad! I didn’t know you could shoot!”

“Actually a gun’s a pretty simple tool.” He reached onto the table and picked up the knife, cutting his ankles loose from the chair.

Allie stepped over to check on Forst who was still breathing but had four holes in his torso and looked to be in pretty bad shape. “We’d better call 911.”

Her dad nodded at the phone where it lay on the floor, “They’re still on the line, I’m sure they’ll be here pronto after hearing gunshots.” Now he was cutting his wife loose from her chair.  “Put Forst’s head down and his legs up, then check on your brother again if you can.” In a whisper he asked, “You drained a hematoma off Stephen’s brain?”

Assuming he didn’t want the 911 people to hear she whispered back, “There was a collection of blood next to his brain that I let out, yes. Is that a ‘hematoma’?”

“Yep, good thinking. Did you bleed these other guys into their heads too?” He was checking on Roger and laying him down on the couch.

“No, just cold water out of a pipe.”

Allie pulled Forst around until his head was on the floor, then lifted his feet up onto a chair.

Allie’s mom picked the phone up off the floor and listened for a moment. “Yes there’s been a shooting and several people are badly hurt. Please hurry! No, the shooting’s all over and the… kidnappers have been disarmed. Please hurry.”

Her dad turned to her, not seeming at all like his usual absent minded self. In a low voice, “OK, we don’t want the police figuring out what you can do, how did you keep the gun from shooting Stephen?”

“Water in the cartridge.”
              Her dad nodded. “Find the shell you jacked out of the chamber. Did you do that to any of the other shells?”

Allie nodded, “First shell in each of their guns.” She was astonished at how fast her dad was figuring all this out. He didn’t seem at all like the doddering, befuddled professor she thought she knew.

“OK and put your pants back on.” He headed into the kitchen and came back with a dish towel.

Startled to realize that she was still just wearing her panties, Allie put her pants back on and picked up the shell off the floor. Her dad came back from the bathroom with another cartridge and went to Mrs. Dans, gently placing her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. He started talking while he went to Roger, pulling his gun out of his shoulder holster with the dishtowel and jacking the slide, then putting the gun back without touching it with his fingers. He was saying, “Here’s our story, ‘Dean and Roger got in a fight in the bathroom and Dean never came back out. Roger must have gotten hurt because he passed out after he came back in here; Allie shot Jones with her pepper spray when he threatened to shoot Stephen. Otherwise we tell the truth about how they were trying to beat a technical secret out of me and threatening you to obtain my cooperation. The fewer the lies, the better our story will hold together.”

Allie realized that Jones must be Raspy’s real name. She bent close to her brother and sensed the inside of his skull. There was a little bit of blood but it didn’t seem like much and there wasn’t any pressure so, as weak as her port ability was, she didn’t try to let any out. She looked over at her mom who was calmly telling the 911 people that there were three unconscious people and one “bad” man who’d been shot. She heard the water running in the kitchen.

The door slammed open and two armored, helmeted policemen burst in wielding shotguns, “Hands up!”

Allie and her mom put their hands up. Her dad called out, “I’m coming out of the kitchen.” After an OK from the policeman he stepped out of the kitchen with his hands up too.

Allie rode in the ambulance with Stephen and her dad. Stephen was admitted to the hospital and taken away for a CAT scan. They x-rayed Allie’s leg in the ED, gave her some antibiotics and turned Allie and her dad back over to the police for questioning. X-rays had shown that Dr. Dans’ nose was broken, but they taped a splint over it and set him up to straighten it the next day. Her mother had already been questioned and released back to stay with Stephen.

At the police station, Allie and her dad were questioned for about an hour or so and then they took a taxi back to the hospital to find that Stephen was sitting up and talking, though still a little confused about what had happened.

Later as they went down to the hospital cafeteria, Allie’s dad said, “I want you to know how very proud I am of you, Allie. It amazed me how you kept your cool when you were dealing with those guys.”

She tilted her head, and narrowed her eyes, “You aren’t mad that I didn’t tell you I could make ports again?”

He chuckled, “No. I’ve always thought you probably could do it, but just didn’t want to because I was such a pest. I think I deserved it. And now I can see that a port has terrible potential as a weapon, not just as a useful technology.” He got a wistful look on his face, but then turned to look her in the eyes. “I guess I’ll give up on it.” He paused, then said, “I also wanted to tell you how wonderful I think your success with ‘Eve of Destruction’ is. You have
two
amazing talents and personally, I think your music is astonishing.”

Allie and her mom both stopped in their tracks.

Her mom said, “You knew?!”

Allie said, “You’ve listened to our music?!”

He shrugged, “Sure, I’ve got both CDs and I went to two of your concerts when I was in Buffalo for a meeting last summer. It felt really cool, being in that crowd, knowing
I
was ‘Eva’s’ dad.”

Allie’s mom said plaintively, “And you didn’t tell me?”

“You didn’t know? And here I thought
I
was the oblivious one.”

The End

What if - you could open wormholes from one location to another with your mind?

BILLY BENOIT

Billy Benoit had been transmuted.

A change apparent at first glance to anyone who’d known him, even as casually as I had. Not transmuted as lead into gold, but more as brass into iron. Rusty, worn, beaten, or perhaps just hammered iron, but iron nonetheless. Hair still dark; handsome face still unwrinkled; frame still slender, yet muscular; but now age and experience hung about him like an aura.

I had just entered Joel’s Hole as was my habit of a Friday night—after a week at the desk—to drink a few beers, to shoot the proverbial shit, and to hope that some woman would pick me up and take me home. Since I almost never had the courage to try to pick up a woman myself, I relied on an occasional desperate woman who might make the first move on me.

Regularly, at some point during most evenings at Joel’s, I had a brief, backslapping, chest-puffing conversation with Billy. An exchange usually inspired by a desire to get closer to Billy’s companion. He would be there with a different woman almost every Friday, usually recently met, almost always the most attractive girl in the club.

Billy and I would exchange a few meaningless pleasantries in the fashion of men, mostly braggadocios and insults. Eventually he would introduce me to his new lady and shortly after that I would move on. Later I would observe with envy as they became more and more entwined until eventually he maneuvered her out the door—low purpose in mind.

But the night that I saw Billy had changed, I found him alone. His solitary status alone was exceptional, but, ignoring that, there was still a distinction. It
was
him, but it wasn’t the
familiar
him. Curious, I found myself settling onto the adjacent stool. Not to spend a few minutes on meaningless trivialities as had been our custom, but already cognizant somehow, that I would be there for hours.

“What happened?” I asked.

As he turned to face me, there was no surprise on his face. No question in his eyes that I would
know
something had changed in him. His stare was penetrating as he said, “You write, don’t you?”

Neither Billy nor I had ever, to my recollection, spoken of our work, so the question surprised me. Mildly taken aback, I said, “Well I write some, more of a hobby. I’ve never had anything commercially published, but I must have converted at least
one
tree into rejection slips.”

It was a poor joke, but one repeated often enough that my polished delivery usually brought at least a smirk.

No smirks this time.

Billy continued sizing me up for another few seconds and then said quietly, “I’ll tell
you
a story.”

I’ve cursed myself several times since that night for not insisting on recording his tale. Of course, I didn’t think I’d hear much of a story. Other, closer, friends had told me yarns that they thought ought to be written; those stories had
all
been crap. So it wasn’t ‘til we were deep into his tale that I found myself expecting that, of course, I would try to write
this
story out.

But, not wanting to interrupt Billy, I just let him ramble on. I figured that I’d just catch him later for any poorly recalled details.

I haven’t seen Billy since.

He began the story by reminding me that we’d met in our usual fashion the Friday before. He’d accompanied an exquisite blond woman named Kim. I’d stopped by to be introduced, to ogle Kim, and told them a few bad jokes. To my shame, I admit that all I actually remember of Kim was her cleavage. Despite her quirked smile of amusement over my attraction to it, that cleavage repeatedly drew my eyes—kind of like moths banging into a light.

Billy related that after my departure he’d been surprised to find himself having an actual
conversation
with Kim. Certainly, he spoke to all the ladies he spent time with, but those were mere chats about meaningless trivialities. With Kim he found himself actually listening and arguing. Rather than merely trying to impress a girl with his conversational talent, he found himself wanting to know what
she
thought about the topics.

She had an odd perspective on life, as if she were from a foreign country, though she had no accent. She questioned concepts that Billy accepted as matters of fact, especially things historical. As she would disagree with Billy’s prejudice on an issue, she would repeatedly point out that history is written by the winners. They spoke of literature, famous writers, and science fiction.

At one point, Billy said, the topic ran aground upon Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee.” Billy’s contention had focused on his feeling that it would be
great
to go back in time where he, with his modern knowledge, could “kick ass and take names.”