The Object: Book One (Object Series) (18 page)

She was shaking her head and saying, "No, that's not true."

Hayden leaned forward.  "Some people broke in, and Drake got shot, but they got away. 
Sherman
was trying to take him to the hospital.  Then everything went crazy.  There's a man somewhere in this city who has one of these things on his head.  He's killing people, burning down buildings. 
We might be the only ones who can stop him."

"I have to find Drake and Kate."

"Lillia,
Sherman
saw him
.  The same guy I dreamed about last night.  I dreamed about Drake and Kate, too.  I saw
one of those things c
ome
down and t
ake
the
m
."

"What do you mean
t
ake
them
?" she yelled.  "How did it
take
them?"

He sighed, struggled to think of what to say.  "Lillia, it sucked them up in one of its tentacles.  It ate them."

He tried to stop her but she yanked her arm from his grip and screamed, "Stay away from me!"

Then she left.

~ ~ ~ ~

"I know those two," Meredith said.  "They were at the hospital.  She had these things in her hair."

"Dreadlocks?" Trey asked.

Meredith looked at him strangely.  "How did you know that?"

Trey shrugged.  "Hey, can I have fifty cents for the jukebox?"

"The jukebox is fifty cents?" Roger asked.

"Yeah, I checked on the way in."

Roger fished some change out of his pocket and gave it to Trey.  When Trey stood, Pete tried to go with him, but Trey whispered, "Stay here, Pete.  I'll be right back."

Roger watched him go and his eyes returned to the boy whose girlfriend had just screamed at him before running out of the restaurant.  The boy was staring back.  Not at him but at Meredith.

"Is everything okay?" Roger asked.

"Not even close," the boy said.

Roger couldn't help but think he looked familiar.  Something about his eyes.

"You gonna chase after her?"

The boy shook his head.  "Don't know there's a point.  I know where she's going anyway."

"The library," Roger said.

"Yeah, I guess you heard that."

"Everybody did.  Maybe you should go after her.  She shouldn't be by herself."

"It's useless," he said.  "
If you knew the whole story . . ."

"I think I might," Roger said.  "I was there.  What you were talking about.  The man who looked like he'd been barbequed.  And the cat."

"The cat?" the boy said.  "What cat?"

"I was taking care of this girl's cat.  He was like a human.  I know that sounds crazy.  He understood what I was saying.  We had this whole system--" He stopped.  "Anyway, I was there.  I
watched
all that stuff go down."

"Maybe you should go tell her that," he said
, standing
.
  He stepped up to Roger's table and spoke in a lower voice.
  "I'm going to go find that man and kill him.
  I think he's looking for her."

Roger leaned forward.  "Do you think you can take him on?  He's more than human, you know.  If you really saw what he can do.  How about you just come with us?"

"I don't have time," he said.

A spoon lifted from the table and melted in front of Roger's face.  Then the cold yet molten material, drifting like water in zero gravity, collapsed on itself to form a perfectly round ball no wider than a quarter.  It solidified, generating a rough surface with edges and depressions.  A model of the object or the Earth, something for debate.

The boy
plucked the little memento out of the air.  Then he handed it to Roger.  "Give her that."

Roger took the thing and studied it. 
"What is it?"

"I don't know,"
the boy
said.  "But if she hates me, she'll toss it, and if she doesn't hate me, she'll keep it.
  We have a room at the hotel down the street.  Bring her back if you can."

"We're staying there too," Roger said, but the boy turned and headed out of the restaurant.

Trey passed by him and returned to the table.

"Jukebox is broke."

~ ~ ~ ~

Barry pulled the metal door open and stepped out onto the roof of
the
National City
Tower
, the second tallest building in the city.  Derek waited for him at the north ledge, suit jacket and tie flapping behind him in the wind.  From up here, the belly of the object looked significantly closer, more discernable.  It looked to have metallic caves and mountains, perhaps entry points and navigation systems.  A marvel to look upon.  One might be capable of exploring its terrain, if properly equipped.

Derek looked back and saw him coming.  He
was leaning on the ledge but now he stood straight, hands in his pockets.

"Did you hear about the news chopper going down?" he shouted as Barry approached.

Barry waited until he was close to answer.  "No," he said.

"The marines did it.  After they shot out that overpass.  Something happened, Barry.  Orders were changed.  I've had surveillance units on these rooftops since yesterday morning.  They've got demolition crews rigging up the bridges, Spaghetti Junction, and I bet they're gonna blast craters in the roads, too.  They're sealing us off, man.  I wanted you to come up here and watch.  My boys think it's happening soon.  Like within the next few minutes."

"How the hell would they know that?"

"Sound amplifiers."  Derek turned to face the
Ohio River
.  "Just watch and see.
  I bet we get nuked by the end of the day.  I'm getting out of here."

 
"You've got to be crazy to want to leave this."

"Leave what?"

Barry raised his arms out.  "All of it.  Everything.  I feel something, Derek.  An energy in the air.  It's coming from that.  Don't you feel it?"

"No," Derek said.  "You're crazy.  You've got to be crazy to want to stay here."

Barry felt his cell phone vibrating and pulled it out of his pocket.

"Hello?"

"Yo, one of my boys found your girl.  She's at the library."

"University?"

"Nah,
Fourth Street
.  Public library."

Ray hung up, and Barry smiled as he returned the phone to his pocket.

The explosions rocked the building and sent such tremendous thunder across the city that many probably thought this their final moment.  The skyline lit up with fire and debris and the two visible bridges
collapsed in sections into the river, the water surface treacherous with choppy waves and debris.

On land, the interweaving highways and entrance ramps known as Spaghetti Junction went up in one simultaneous explosion, generating a dark gray cloud of dust and smoke that grew so rapidly it might well reach the object.

"You believe me now?" Derek shouted into the wind and lingering thunder.  He was terrified.  Pitiful.  He'd always been such a baby
.

"I had sex with your wife," Barry said.  He laughed.  "Five times."

"What?"  Derek took a step forward.

"She's got that little four-leaf clover tattoo on her inner thigh, you know what I'm talking about?  She showed it to me at your birthday party, after you'd passed out in a lawn chair.  Said she was hoping to get lucky.  We did it on your bed.  Then four more times before I got bored with her."

Derek reached for his gun but Barry fell upon him, yanking his wrist with a twisting motion and easily taking the gun from his limp fingers.  He pushed Derek to the ground and heaved the gun over the side of the building.

"People who fear for their lives on a daily basis are the ones who have no life worth preserving.  They mask that truth with their fear.  You're pathetic.  You think you're going to escape this city?  No, that would be a bold move, something you're not capable of.  The only way you'd leave this city is if I led you by the hand.  But I'm not going to, Derek.  In fact, I'd kill you right now if I had time.  As it happens, I have to be somewhere more important right now.  So you just carry on."

Barry turned toward the door to the stairwell.

Derek shouted, "How can you talk to me this way?  As much as I've done for you?  As much
money
as I helped you steal? 
I'm
your brother, damn you."

"You're not even my sister," Barry said, laughing hysterically as he left Derek
calling out to him on the roof.

When he stepped out the lobby doors to the street, he stopped to inspect Derek's splattered body on the sidewalk, only to confirm
the body's identity,
before jogging to his car.

~ ~ ~ ~

The only way Hayden could think to start was just driving around the major roads all throughout the city, hoping he would sense Ted the way he sensed Lillia, her signal growing fainter as she ran farther away.

He got a whiff of a feeling coming up Fourth Street, lost it, then picked it up again as he drew closer to the downtown area.

At Broadway he took a left and then an immediate right onto
Fifth Street
, continuing north.  He knew it ended at
West Main Street
.

He felt a left turn coming.  Then Ted would be close.

~ ~ ~ ~

Sherman
awoke on the bench where he'd sat drinking and talking to himself half the night, then finally passing out with an empty bottle in his hand.
  He was close to the road, his back to the iron fence in front of the
Louisville
Slugger
Museum
.

It was morning.  He peered behind him in both directions, instinctively looking for cops.  He didn't see a soul.

Except for one. 
Sherman
caught him out of the corner of his eye.  Down the street stood a four-story building with gothic arches in its windows and features of a castle, including in the right corner a cone-roofed bell tower.  On the tip of the roof was perched a dark figure, a silhouette
barely visible against the brownish backdrop of the object.

It was watching him.

When he tried to stand, it came bounding through the air like a hawk and landed right in front of him.  It was Ted.  His skin charred and hanging off, part of his jawbone exposed, several ribs showing where a section of his side had burned off completely.  His clothes were mere rags still clinging to their stitching.  He had no lips or eyelids.

Sherman
tried to back away and fell onto the bench.  The smell of Ted brought him close to vomiting.  Then he did.

"Where is she?" Ted hissed.

Sherman
shook his head, spitting bile onto the sidewalk.

"Tell me," Ted said.

"I don't know where she's at, man.  Ain't nothin' I can do for you."

Ted grabbed him by the shirt and leaned into him, pressing him into the bench and sending an agony through his body that made him believe he was burning alive.  Ted screamed into his face and the spray of saliva from his mouth felt like steam from boiling water. 
"Where is she?"

Sherman
couldn't speak until Ted let go of him.  Then he shouted, "The library!  That's the last I saw her!  The library!"

He fell over on his side, crying and cringing with pain.  He'd betrayed her once again, and now he could feel the heat of Ted leaning closer and closer.  This was the end, and it was one he deserved.  He should have killed Ted when he had the chance.  None of this would have happened.  Lillia and the children would still have a home, and they wouldn't have left to be separated from each other, the children killed, and for all he knew, Lillia killed, too.

A squealing noise suddenly rose directly behind him to near deafening volume.  He felt Ted back away and turned just in time to see the driver's side door of a red sports car
fly off its hinges and go bouncing down the street like a flat rock across the river's surface.

Out of the car stepped Hayden, the boy from the library.

Immediately, he and Ted collided in midair, their feet just above
Sherman
's head.  He dove out of the way as they came down, then scrambled to his feet and took off down the street.  Half a block away, he stopped and turned around to see Hayden being slung into the side of the museum.  Ted charged him but Hayden jumped high in the air and landed halfway up the big steel bat structure that lay against the side of the building.